Wall Street’s Favorite Stocks of 2024, With Analysts’ Commentary

• Most Wall Street pros missed the mark in 2022 and 2023, but 2024 forecasts have arrived anyway.
• Jeffrey Yale Rubin of Birinyi Associates pored through analyst recommendations and advice for 2024.
• He found 11 stocks that appear more than most on Wall Street’s top recommendations for this year.

Every new year, Wall Street pulls out its crystal ball and attempts to foresee what the next 12 months will bring. Some of the smartest strategists in the world put their heads together to determine which stocks will head to the moon, which are worth avoiding, and which way the market will go.

But even the biggest brains on Wall Street can get it wrong.

“Strategists entered the year for the most part in a somber mood with forecasted declines of 10% over the next 12 months common place,” wrote Jeffrey Yale Rubin, the director of research at Birinyi Associates, of 2023 stock-market forecasts. “On average the 21 firms that eventually published a 2023 year-end target were looking for a below average gain of 6%.”

Of course, the reality was far different than what Wall Street expected. The S&P 500 soared over 24% in 2023, outpacing all but the most bullish forecasts, with a particularly potent Santa Claus rally topping off the unexpectedly strong year.

Unfortunately for the pros, this isn’t the first time they have missed the mark in recent memory. As Rubin pointed out, their best guesses weren’t good enough in 2022 either, when many entered the year bullish only to be blindsided by a nearly 20% pullback.

Despite these misses, Wall Street isn’t giving up on its attempts to prognosticate the market’s next move. With January came a deluge of 2024 forecasts, which Rubin parsed through to find signals in all the noise.

“This year there are 22 strategists willing to stick their necks out and throw a dart as to where they think the S&P 500 will be next December,” Rubin wrote in early January. “Twelve of the predictions are for the market to head higher, while ten forecast the S&P 500 to decline. The average is for the S&P 500 to end the year essentially unchanged at 4,767!”

Among the many notes he read through, Rubin spotted a few patterns. He pointed out that Wall Street is anticipating a soft landing in 2024, and believes that the Federal Reserve Board (FRB) will begin cutting rates in the first half of the new year.

As for stock picks, Rubin noted that the pros recommend small-cap stocks, as well as value stocks over growth picks. They’re also bullish on foreign equities, particularly Japanese stocks, over their US counterparts, he wrote.

The Fed’s moves dictated the market’s direction in 2023, and judging from Wall Street’s focus in their 2024 forecasts, Jerome Powell’s words will still hold plenty of weight this year. But Rubin isn’t particularly worried about what the Fed is planning — he’d rather focus on catching the market’s ongoing rally.

“As for us, we continue to want to own stocks, not because the FRB is done raising rates or because they might begin to start cutting them or even because inflation continues to head lower,” Rubin wrote. “We want to own stocks because we are in a bull market and in a bull market that is what you do, you own stocks.”

Wall Street’s favorite stocks to own in 2024

The only question is which stocks to buy.

As he read through Wall Street’s predictions, Rubin compiled analysts’ stock recommendations for 2024 into one long list of 267 top picks. Among those stocks are 11 that appear on four or more top investment recommendation lists, which Rubin dubbed Wall Street’s…