Wall Street's top strategists collectively forecast another year of gains for the S&P 500, albeit a much more muted one. That's to be expected after the benchmark index gained more than fifth on a price basis in 2023.
Wall Street's average target on the index gives the S&P 500 implied upside of about 5% from current levels. At the high end, Capital Economics forecasts the benchmark index to hit 5,500 by the end of 2024, giving the S&P 500 implied price upside of about 15% next year. At the low end, JPMorgan Chase expects the index to retreat 12% to 4,200 in 2024.
Passive investors will go along for the ride no matter where it takes them. Stock pickers, on the other hand, seek to beat their benchmarks, and that's where Wall Street's S&P 500 stocks with the most upside come in.
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Analysts base their Buy, Hold or Sell recommendations on how they expect a stock to perform relative to the S&P 500 over the next 12 months or so. To do so, they plug numbers into discounted cash flow models. These models spit out price targets, which tell them where the stock should be trading in a year. The difference between the stock's current price and its target is called its implied, or potential, upside. Analysts' average price targets tell you how the Street collectively expects a stock to perform.
While you can hardly base a stock-picking strategy on the sole criterion of price targets, it can be helpful to know which S&P 500 stocks are expected to deliver the biggest returns in the year ahead. To that end, we used S&P Global Market Intelligence to screen the S&P 500 for the index members with the highest implied upside for 2024 and beyond.
Have a look at the table below to see the 10 S&P 500 stocks analysts expect to put up the biggest price gains in 2024. (Price targets and other data are as of December 22.)
| Company | Ticker | Implied price upside over next 12 months |
|---|---|---|
| Moderna | MRNA | 58% |
| Warner Bros. Discovery | WBD | 45% |
| Bio-Rad Laboratories | BIO | 43% |
| First Solar | FSLR | 39% |
| United Airlines Holdings | UAL | 36% |
| General Motors | GM | 36% |
| Halliburton | HAL | 35% |
| APA Corp. | APA | 34% |
| Aptiv | APTV | 34% |
| Las Vegas Sands | LVS | 33% |
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