Newsletters' 50 most-wanted stocks
By Mark Hulbert, CBS.MarketWatch.com
Last Update: 12:19 AM ET July 23, 2002
ANNANDALE, Va. (CBS.MW) -- Intel currently is the most popular stock among the investment newsletters monitored by the Hulbert Financial Digest. No fewer than 16 of them are recommending the stock for purchase.
After Intel (INTC: news, chart, profile), three more companies are tied for second place in this popularity contest, with each being recommended for purchase by a dozen newsletters on the HFD list: Cisco (CSCO: news, chart, profile), Johnson & Johnson (JNJ: news, chart, profile), and Microsoft (MSFT: news, chart, profile).
To see which 46 other companies made this list of the 50 most popular, take a look at the table that accompanies this column.
Before being winnowed down to just 50, this list had 1,912 stocks on it. That's how many stocks currently are being recommended by at least one of the 160 newsletters currently monitored by the Hulbert Financial Digest. By eliminating those stocks that had 5 or fewer newsletters recommending them, I was able to narrow the list down to 61.
I succeeded in reducing the list even further by excluding stocks whose market caps are less than $2.94 billion. This cutoff was chosen for the soundest of theoretical reasons: It was necessary to ensure that the list contained just 50 stocks.
To me, the biggest surprise about this list is that just 2 gold stocks appear on it: Newmont Mining (NEM: news, chart, profile) and Barrick Gold (ABX: news, chart, profile). Not only is the yellow metal coming off one of its strongest 12-month showings in years, in recent sessions it seems to have regained some steam following a several-week correction.
Since many investment newsletters got their start in the 1970s by recommending gold and mining shares, I would have thought that gold shares would have dominated the list of their 50 most popular.
The fact that they don't is yet more confirmation of the skepticism with which newsletters currently have for the gold market. As I noted in my column last week, this skepticism actually is a bullish omen.
Another striking feature is the courage of newsletter editors' convictions in the case of stocks that the market has decimated.
Take Johnson & Johnson, for example, which shed nearly 20 percent of its value last week after it was announced that a criminal investigation had been launched into the operations of one of the company's factories. The newsletter editors stuck to their guns in the face of that news, with at least one considering the market's action as the occasion to buy even more.
That editor is Richard Band, editor of Richard Band's Profitable Investing. In a Monday-afternoon e-mail to subscribers, he entreated them to consider JNJ's plunge "as a buying opportunity (much as the Tylenol panic gave us a chance to buy JNJ dirt-cheap back in the 1980s). From today's levels, I think JNJ could soar 40 to 50 percent in a year."
In my column tomorrow: The 50 most-recommended mutual funds.
For more information or to subscribe to the Hulbert Financial Digest, click here.
Stock Ticker No. of letters recommending
Intel (INTC: news, chart, profile) 16
Cisco (CSCO: news, chart, profile) 12
Johnson & Johnson (JNJ: news, chart, profile) 12
Microsoft (MSFT: news, chart, profile) 12
Pfizer (PFE: news, chart, profile) 11
Philip Morris (MO: news, chart, profile) 10
Autozone (AZO: news, chart, profile) 9
Newmont Mining (NEM: news, chart, profile) 9
Procter and Gamble (PG: news, chart, profile) 9
United Health Group (UNH: news, chart, profile) 9
Bank America (BAC: news, chart, profile) 8
Mohawk Industries (MHK: news, chart, profile) 8
Washington Mutual (WM: news, chart, profile) 8
Wellpoint Health Networks (WLP: news, chart, profile) 8
American Express (AXP: news, chart, profile) 7
AOL Time Warner (AOL: news, chart, profile) 7
Applied Materials (AMAT: news, chart, profile) 7
Barrick Gold (ABX: news, chart, profile) 7
Bed Bath & Beyond (BBBY: news, chart, profile) 7
Berkshire Hathaway (BRKB: news, chart, profile) 7
H&R Block (HRB: news, chart, profile) 7
Concord EFS (CEFT: news, chart, profile) 7
Exxon Mobil (XOM: news, chart, profile) 7
Hewlett Packard (HPQ: news, chart, profile) 7
IBM (IBM: news, chart, profile) 7
Lockheed Martin (LMT: news, chart, profile) 7
Motorola (MOT: news, chart, profile) 7
Nokia (NOK: news, chart, profile) 7
Pepsico (PEP: news, chart, profile) 7
T Rowe Price (TROW: news, chart, profile) 7
Tenet Healthcare (THC: news, chart, profile) 7
Texas Instruments (TXN: news, chart, profile) 7
Wal Mart Stores (WMT: news, chart, profile) 7
American Int'l. Group (AIG: news, chart, profile) 6
Bisys Group (BSG: news, chart, profile) 6
Boeing (BA: news, chart, profile) 6
ConAgra Foods (CAG: news, chart, profile) 6
Walt Disney Company (DIS: news, chart, profile) 6
FedEx (FDX: news, chart, profile) 6
Fortune Brands (FO: news, chart, profile) 6
General Motors (GM: news, chart, profile) 6
Golden West Financial (GDW: news, chart, profile) 6
HJ Heinz (HNZ: news, chart, profile) 6
Home Depot (HD: news, chart, profile) 6
Lowe's (LOW: news, chart, profile) 6
McDonald's (MCD: news, chart, profile) 6
Merck & Co. (MRK: news, chart, profile) 6
Qualcomm (QCOM: news, chart, profile) 6
Verizon Communications (VZ: news, chart, profile) 6
Wells Fargo (WFC: news, chart, profile) 6
Mark Hulbert is the founder of Hulbert Financial Digest in Annandale, Va. He has been tracking the advice of more than 160 financial newsletters since 1980. |
