3 Predictions for the New Week

I went out on a limb last week, and now it's time to see how that decision played out.

• I predicted that Sirius XM Radio (SIRI -1.59%) would move higher on the week. The satellite-radio provider had closed lower in three consecutive weeks, and you have to go back to June to find the last time that had happened. The shares bounced back nicely the following week. It seemed to be a repeat performance this time around, with the stock up nicely through Thursday. It gave back all of those gains on Friday to close unchanged for the week. I was wrong.
• I predicted that the tech-heavy Nasdaq would outperform the Dow Jones Industrial Average. (^DJI -0.12%). This has been a tricky call lately, so how did it play out this time? Well, this was a great week for stocks. The Nasdaq moved 1.3% higher, but that wasn't enough to catch the Dow and its 1.6% pop. I was wrong.
• My final call was for CalAmp (CAMP -4.91%) to beat Wall Street's income estimates in its latest quarter. The fast-growing provider of wireless communication solutions has been routinely beating Wall Street projections over the past year. I was banking on a repeat performance. CalAmp came through by posting a profit of $0.23 a share, blowing past the $0.21 the pros were forecasting. CalAmp's soft guidance for the current quarter hurt the stock, but a beat's a beat. I was right.

One out of three? I can do better than that.

Let me once again whip out my trusty, dusty, and occasionally accurate crystal ball to make three calls that may play out over the next few trading days.

1. Sirius XM will move higher on the week
I got cheated on my Sirius XM call with a buzzer-beater on Friday, so I'm going back for redemption. When's the last time that the satellite-radio monopoly posted four weeks in a row without moving higher? What are the chances of that stretching to five?

With Sirius XM's monthly rate inching higher in January, this should push profitability sharply higher, given the nature of this model, where the fixed costs are high and the variable costs are low. Investors may have ignored Sirius XM in December, but that should change soon.

My first call is for Sirius XM's stock to move higher this week.

2.The Nasdaq Composite will beat the Dow this week
Tech has been a big winner in recent years, so betting on tech over stodgy blue chips has been a good bet for me more often than not.

I'm going to stick with this pick, even if it's been a bad bet a few times lately. This is the time for Nasdaq's growth stocks to shine. The market is ripe for the tech-stacked secondary stocks to continue to outpace the 30 megacaps that make up the Dow Jones Industrial Average.

3. Lindsay will beat Wall Street's earnings estimates
Some stocks are just flat-out better than others.

Lindsay (LNN -1.19%) is a provider of irrigation systems and infrastructure products. Its irrigation solutions help farmers stabilize crop production while conserving water, energy, and labor. Its infrastructure products enhance road safety.

Another thing it does is make analysts look like perpetual underachievers. If analysts say that the company posted a profit of $0.89 a share in its latest quarter, I'll argue that it held up better than that. History's on my side!

One of my best tricks to beating the market is finding stocks that perpetually land ahead of the prognosticators. Let's go over the past year of earnings reports.

Source: Thomson Reuters.

Things can change, of course. Lindsay did miss -- and miss badly -- last time out. I usually like to pick stocks that have four quarters in a row of market-thumping performances, but there were only a few companies reporting earnings during this holiday-abridged trading week. I'll take my chances and hope that the fiscal fourth-quarter miss was a fluke and not the beginning of a trend.