Must Read: Quant Ratings Updated on 68 Stocks U.S. stocks have continued to slip as Wall Street prepares for another rate hike from the Federal Reserve. After wobbling between small gains and losses throughout the trading session, the SP 500 closed higher 0.7% on Monday. The benchmark stock index was coming off one of its worst weeks of the year, when it fell nearly 5%. The reality is it has been a volatile summer of trading. The stock market rally proved short-lived as investors lost hope that the economy would look better in the coming months. One driver for the grim mood was last week’s Consumer Price Index ( CPI ), which showed inflation was higher than expected. Consumer prices rose 8.3% year-over-year in August, down from 8.5% over in July but above the 8.1% economists expected. We talked more about this and the effect this will have on the Fed in last Tuesday’s Market 360 issue . It’s important that you begin adjusting your portfolio to make sure that you’re invested in fundamentally superior companies – companies with strong sales and earnings growth and positive outlooks – as these will be the go-to names for investors once third-quarter earnings season gets underway.