Wolfe Research
Chris Senyek, 4/10/24
Bullish on ITW
KO
MCD
“Dividend themes generally performed well after the final hike in a Fed tightening cycle, with Dividend Aristocrats performing the best... During economic slowdowns or recessionary environments, our favorite dividend focused strategy is buying companies with a long track record of consistently increasing dividends, a.k.a., dividend aristocrats. This cohort of stocks has generally outperformed heading into and out of recessions.”
Citi
Andrew Hollenhorst, 2/20/24
Neutral on HD
KBR
MDT
“The minutes will likely follow recent Fed speakers in suggesting that the Fed will lower interest rates this year but only ‘carefully’ once officials have ‘greater confidence’ that inflation is durably slowing towards 2%.”
XTB
Kathleen Brooks, 2/20/24
Cautiously Optimistic on HD
KBR
MDT
“Unsurprisingly, there are big expectations for Nvidia, and if they fail to deliver this could be a major upset to the S&P 500, as the top five stocks in the U.S. blue chip index have fueled 75% of its gains so far in 2024.”
Chief Markets Strategist at Morningstar
David Sekera, 2/19/24
on GSK
KHC
MDT
“It’s always a stock picker’s market, but that this is even more pertinent this year. We can look at individual stocks across several themes over the past couple of years to see which stocks have really been the ones that have outperformed the broader market,”
“The company’s individual costs went up over the past couple of years as inflation was running at a very high rate in the United States. And, to some degree, it lagged in its own price increases,”
“As inflation now is moderating, we do think that their price increases can catch up to their costs and get back towards more normalized to historical margins.”
“Medtronic is a four-star rated stock, trades at a 25% discount, it’s a high-quality company. And our equity team thinks it’s probably one of the best positioned med tech companies, for the continued aging of the baby boomer generation,”
“The London Stock Exchange-listed company is trading at a 27% discount...the Morningstar team thinks that the market is probably overestimating the litigation costs to the company for one of its products by the name of Zantac,”