| WEEKLY ROUNDUP Hello, Reader. Today, the White House hosted its annual Easter Egg Roll, the first one of President Donald Trump’s second administration. Four thousand people gathered on the South Lawn for nearly as many eggs…. but not the plastic, candy-filled kind. Instead, around 30,000 real eggs decorated the South Lawn, despite the high cost of the food item. In March, the price of a dozen eggs reached a record-high of $6.23. And according to the latest consumer price index (CPI) on April 10, the price of eggs is up 5.9% from a month ago and 60.4% from this time last year. Despite this data, Trump posted on social media this morning that food costs – including that of eggs – are “trending so nicely downward.” He made the same claim last week, too, posting that “groceries (even eggs!) are down.” The truth is that grocery prices have continued to rise under Trump, and will likely continue to rise due to the president’s sweeping tariffs. This reminds me of what then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld infamously remarked during the Iraq War in 2004: “You go to war with the army you have, not the army you might want or wish to have at a later time.” Likewise, we investors must engage with economic and stock market conditions as they actually are, not as we, or Trump, might wish them to be (the price of eggs included). Today, for example, we might wish that the three major U.S. stock market indexes didn’t open in the red. But that’s not the stock market we have. On the economic front, we might wish that we had never even heard of the word “tariff,” or that a trade war was not still underway. We might also wish that inflation expectations were tumbling and that consumer sentiment was not.  But that’s not the economy we have. Therefore, as often happens, we investors must take the good with the bad, while trying to identify the stocks that offer the best risk-reward potential. Often, those kinds of stocks live in the stock market’s shadows, where they attract little attention. You’ll never find a high-flier or stock market “darling” in those shadows, but you might find the next high-flier sitting there. Companies in the shadows tend to carry below-average valuations, even when they possess above-average growth prospects. Discounted prices provide excellent entry points, all else being equal. Additionally, a low valuation can provide at least some protection against the kind of stock market trauma we’ve been enduring recently. In fact, I shared a lowly valued, “unpopular” tech stock here with you last week. It’s a name that I’ve recommend in my Fry’s Investment Report service… and one that I’m not abandoning just yet. In case you missed it, you can read that Smart Money below, and check out what else we covered here this past week… | 
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