These Are The Stocks To Buy In 2026 According to Analysts

Hey everyone and welcome back to probably the last video of 2025. This is the year-to-date performance of the tech companies that we follow, the companies in finance, healthcare, consumer staples, you name it. All in all, it has been an amazing year yet again for the majority of names in the majority of sectors. And of course, now is maybe the time to start looking at what's going to happen or what we think will happen in 2026. A lot of banks, analyst firms have already come out with their own list. So let's go over all of them in this video. A lot of them are, of course, the obvious picks, right? I think we've discussed this already over the last couple of days, the big tech players, and some even believe in comebacks for 2026. Now at the time of recording this video, of course, we have some pre-market action. It's not that great. So the Santa rally for now did not or is not happening just yet. On Monday, markets were red. We've had a lot of names pull back even more. So Santa rally, more like more of a Grinch rally, although you do know what we say, Santa is red, Grinch is green. So yeah. Anyways, let's dive right into this. If you enjoy this type of videos, hit all the buttons. We'd really appreciate that. It's been an amazing year and I appreciate all of the support. Let's make 2026 even better. If you want to support me even further, do check out the link down in the description and in the pinned comment the top 10 best stocks to buy now, or go to fool.com forward slash couch investor. Thank you very much. So first up, quick overview of the Magnificent 7. We did a specific video talking about the Magnificent 7, I believe the last week or so, that will be in the top right corner. But this is the year to date performance. Alphabet, believe it or not, is the number one year after, of course, struggling for the first half of the year. Then we have Nvidia 41.9 percent and then, of course, a huge gap. Tesla up 17.7 percent, Microsoft 15.7, Meta only 13.3, Apple only 9.2 and then Amazon 6 percent. Now, as you know, we already talked a little bit about the value growth stocks going into 2026. A lot of you picked Amazon. A lot of you picked Meta. Some of you also picked Microsoft. So again, the question here is, which one of the Magnificent 7 do you think will outperform the market and maybe will outperform this basket right here in 2026? Let me know down in the comments section below. Now, first things first, let's have a look here at Wall Street bets, top upvoted stocks going into 2026. I'll start off with this and then we'll go have a look at all of the others, Deniz, Jeffries, Citi, Goldman, you name it. These are, again, upvoted stocks based on Wall Street bets forum on Reddit. What is surprising here is that I'm seeing a lot more real companies on the list. We have Amazon at number one. I think that's fair. Then we do have two space stocks, Rocket Lab and AST Space Mobile. You might say these are highly speculative names. Yes, these are highly volatile names, high beta names that have been performing extremely well based on, of course, future performances, especially for AST. Rocket Lab already generates a lot of revenue, but it will generate and should be generating a hell of a lot more once Neutron becomes a real thing. Then number four, we have your Google Alphabet. So again, another one of the Magnificent 7 on that list. Number five is another popular retail name, Nebius. I would definitely put that on that list. Then I have Reddit and this comes from Reddit. So OK, Reddit is up there. Poet is that small semiconductor player that became more popular when certain YouTubers started to promote it on YouTube. They got paid to talk about this company and this stock, I believe, last year or so. Then number eight, we have SoFi, probably put SoFi a Now, UiPath is, of course, a company and a stock that is gathering momentum, especially after the last earnings report, the stock started to move aggressively. I do still think that it is very cheap and they do still have a lot to prove. And in my opinion, still an acquisition target. As for number 10 here, that's Micron. I own it, of course, but I do think that it is not worth chasing that much anymore. Is there more upside left? Of course. But the big, big moves, I think the easy money has been made with Micron. Moving on to the analyst picks, and these were generated not by myself this time, but by Koshik Wisemancap on X. He gets access to a lot of these analyst nodes. So always very, very useful. And then he basically created these infographics from NanoBanana. Some of you think the design of these are not up to the design god standards. But to me, this is just so much better than just writing bullet points. Yes, it is true that sometimes it is quite complicated to understand what the heck's going on here. But in this case, it is very simple. And that's also why I talk over these infographics. Plus, if you like them or if you're watching on mobile, which I know a lot of you are, I know it's very difficult to see sometimes what is written down. Just take a screenshot or go on this guy's X, save the image, and you can zoom in and do whatever you want. Anyways, Wolf Research here. Top alpha picks, Micron, FedEx, O'Reilly Automotive, Darden, Lumentum. Very specific names here. So Micron, of course, I mean, we just spoke about it. FedEx, they put it here as a cyclical recovery. That's the thesis. Super high conviction. O'Reilly, defensive growth, also high conviction. Trade down winner is Darden. Medium conviction. And then Lumentum, the thesis here for that is AI optical demand. And the conviction here as well is high. That's with regards to the top alpha picks for them. Okay, I wouldn't have this list. But then you have different teams. You have tech titans, AI, and platform dominance. So there you have Amazon, Meta, Uber, Alphabet, and Microsoft. The focus will be, of course, on gen AI monetization and cloud growth acceleration. Okay, nothing new here. Then defensive growth, resilience in slowdown. They pick Chewy. They pick Costco, Walmart, United Health. I would agree with those names. Chewy, I'm less familiar with because I didn't really dive into that company. But Costco, Walmart, United Health, I know Costco is trading at a high premium. But again, if you're looking for that non-AI name, I think one of the three here, or maybe all three for you, does make a lot of sense. Then you have the lower rates and volatility. So the tactical opportunities. Small caps, high beta tech, and biotech. Of course, again, higher volatility, higher risk, higher reward. You cannot pick these types of names. The names that have gone up 200-300% cannot pick these types of names and then complain when there is a violent pullback. If you want the big reward, you have to accept the increased volatility. Moving on to Goldman's top teams and names for 2026. So we have here different buckets. One is the consumer discretionary one. So they assume a middle income rebound. And that's why they put here retail and apparel, dining and food, and travel and leisure. Now with travel and leisure, I agree 100%. We've talked about the cruise stocks, the cruise businesses. I think they've been doing extremely well in 2025. They're all expecting to do well in 2026. As for dining and foods, I am less in the positive side of these things. There are way better opportunities out there in my opinion. Retail and apparel, again, there are some cheap names in that list. Nike being one of those maybe contrarian picks. Rebound plays out there. You have some others here. Gap, Ulta, TGX, among those names. The focus on consumer recovery and renewed volume growth. Again, with higher tax returns, that could definitely help these types of businesses. As for the next one, that's catch-up trades, cyclical and industrial growth. You have materials and steel, industrial and logistics, tech and hardware. These are lagging sectors poised for industrial stabilization, according to Goldman. I don't follow any of these names, so I really have nothing to add here. As for the highest conviction commodities, gold and copper. Gold, they have a target here of $4,900, and copper as a secondary pick. Why? AI data centers, green energy infrastructure. I do think that maybe it's time to talk about the gold and silver bubble that's about to pop. Because everybody's talking about an AI bubble that's about to pop, but why am I not hearing anything about gold and silver being sky high and maybe in bubble territory? I wonder. Last one here is AI and tech enablers. We have semiconductors, software and cloud, hardware auto, and hyperscalers. With semiconductors, here again. Micron. Then, software and cloud, Salesforce and Adobe. I don't disagree. They're very, very cheap names. Hardware auto, they're putting Tesla there. Then hyperscalers is, of course, the usual suspect. Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft, and Oracle. Am I surprised by this list? No. Is it something special? No. Moving on to wetbush AI 30 winners of 2026. Who's in? Who's out? The new players. This is a list, I think, that was released a couple of weeks ago. So, Iron, Core Reef are new names in semiconductor, hardware, and autonomous robotics and power. Strange categories. The ones that are out are Soundhound, Salesforce, and ServiceNow in software. Consumer Internet got a new name in Shopify. But we did have Dan Hives talk specifically about certain names more recently. In the meantime, wetbush security is today out with its top tech names to own into next year. Among them, Microsoft, Apple, Tesla, Palantir, CrowdStrike. One name that you're not seeing on that list, NVIDIA. Dan Hives behind the call. He is the global head of technology research. And I have to issue the biggest correction in the history of my career, which is now that you're in the light, that jacket is not McLaren papaya. It is, I would dare say, peach. Look, I mean, I'll take both sides. Again, you never- That vital correction now aside, why is NVIDIA not on your tech names to own next year, Dan? It's still in our eyes AI30, a top tech name. But ultimately, to me, in terms of the five that stick out, it's really about how do you play the AI revolution on the hyperscaler? How do you play it on the consumer in terms of Apple? How do you play it on enterprise names like Palantir, CrowdStrike, Cybersecurity? I view it as like NVIDIA, there's only one godfather of AI, Jensen. We'll see him next week at CES. But the derivatives, the second, third, fourth, just starting, which is why we're so bullish in tech. You're in the Hall of Fame, Dan, regardless of color. Although Oscar Piastri just emailed me and mentioned that he actually thinks the color is a McLaren papaya. With that said, what does Palantir, what do their revenues need to be? They're going to do six and a half billion dollars of revenue next year to justify a half a trillion dollar valuation in your opinion. Yeah. Look, I mean, to me, and we've talked about a bunch that it's ultimately, it's the commercial business that I believe could ultimately be two, three billion when I see it playing out. I mean, I think when you actually do the trajectory here, I think numbers where you for Palantir in 2026, I think they ultimately double over the next three to four years. And it speaks to the point, super expensive stock today, but I just view it, I think it's a trillion dollar valuation in the next two or three years as the AI revolution plays out. For those that needed a small reminder, this is what has happened with Palantir over the last couple of quarters. You can clearly see re-acceleration in growth, acceleration in growth every single quarter, with the last two quarters being above a billion dollars in revenue per quarter. As for the rest, of course, it goes up and to the right, same here with operating margin, net dollar retention rate set at 134%. Speaking of US commercial last quarter, that almost increased 125%. But yes, when you look at those numbers, it is a very, very small dollar number when you look at the market cap of a Palantir. And he says it could double the next couple of years. That doesn't answer the question for 2026. The growth rates here are insane. There's no doubt about that. The guidance will easily, easily be beat. They have a ton of momentum. But, but does the valuation make sense? I think every single bull, realistic bull will say no. When you go into CES, what I always look at are portfolio of names that are going to shock people, something that shows up. If you, if you, if you search anything with CES, you'll see robotics come up. What are the names you see when you meet with everyone, both private and public companies, what companies are going to A, be there and have impressed you already? Yeah, I think when it comes to robotics, I think maybe like a off the radar name that we're bullish serve, like serve AI. When you look what they're doing on robotics on the delivery side, what I view is actually true autonomous playing out. They'll be there front and center. And look, Steve, to me, it's really like the autonomous is going to be front and center here. It starts with Jensen's going to lay out, but this speaks to autonomous robotics. Robotics is going to be key to what I view as one of the, and that's one of the core names. All right, Dan, talk to us about RPOs. It's not the run pass option. This is remaining purchase obligations here. Not something that I think a lot of folks were talking about too much until this summer when we saw, you know, that huge opening eye contract with Oracle and a lot of investors were really excited. And, you know, as an analyst though, you see this big number, right? You see a $500 billion purchase obligation. How do you like, think about that? It's not in your numbers, right? But it helps kind of formulate how you're thinking about future revenue. Like to me, the market called BS on this with Oracle. And how do you think about it? Is this something we're going to see? Maybe some of these contracts not come to fruition. And I think we sit here a year from now. I think actually one of the names that's going to stick out is, is sort of the Renaissance that's going to happen in Oracle. Because to me, when I look at what's happening, where they play from the stack play, where they play in terms of AI revolution, I think investors are wrong to call out that this RPO, where I go to reacceleration or growth, that's going to go from 18% to 30% to 45%. I think 80 and 90% of that gets done. So to me, would I take out 5% debt if I had 100% chance to ultimately do what they could do? Yeah. And I think that's what they're doing. I think that's why Oracle to me right here, it's a $78 upside, $15 downside risk reward. Okay. Interesting statement here by Dan Ives. Now, again, I think it is very clear to most of us that if, if Oracle does manage to recognize, let's say 80, 85% of that RPO over the next coming years, well, mission accomplished. And a forward PE right now of 26.8 times, it's probably not the most expensive name out there. The problem with all of that is this. It's the fact that a big percent of the backlog comes from OpenAI. Even Microsoft have 39% of their backlog coming from OpenAI and Amazon only 16%. But Oracle, it's 58% of the backlog that is coming from OpenAI. And as we know, OpenAI right now does not have the money. And we've looked at certain estimates for the upcoming years. They will not have the money in the future either, unless maybe, yeah, maybe they do go public. And that's one of the ways to raise an insane amount of money. But then if we go and look at what Citi said, and they are very bullish on Broadcom, they see this number right here is quite interesting. 2029 revenue and CapEx estimates from big four CSPs versus OpenAI. So these, again, 2029 estimates. Look at the revenue for the big four and OpenAI, look at the CapEx for the big four and OpenAI, and then look at CapEx to sales, 24% for big four, 429% for OpenAI. OpenAI alone is expected to have a higher CapEx number than all the big four combined according to Citi's 2029 estimate. So again, it's great to have $1.3 trillion of CapEx commitments and all of that. But they will have to show the market somehow that they can make this happen. Some will say that this story is now too big to fail. Too many players are playing into this. So they will find a way to make this work. Maybe a meta will start taking a stake in OpenAI. Maybe Nvidia will raise the stake in OpenAI. Maybe countries will invest in OpenAI and that's a way for them to reach these insane amounts of investment. Because if that doesn't happen, then yes, I don't see how they'll do it. Moving on to truest securities. So mega cap confidence in 2026 is basically their play. The bigger risk here is AI return on investment fatigue and regulations, Department of Justice cases for whoever is getting served. So they're playing it safe. They're saying basically only mega caps, only Magnuson 7, and you should be fine. Okay. Again, not something special here. Not something that I would disagree either, especially not if you're going with the likes of an Amazon, a meta. Yes, even an Alphabet and Nvidia at these prices, I don't think you can go wrong. Some will even say, yeah, but seems like a lot of people are leaving Microsoft out of this equation. No, I don't think so. I think Microsoft can definitely enter the discussion. With an Apple, I guess you're playing it extremely safe, I would say, because yes, one, they don't have the huge, huge CapEx commitments. What they do have is just a stable, continued, very, very low single digit growth, a dividend, and a lot of buybacks. Now, of course, things can change when suddenly they can come out with a much better Siri that might be powered by Gemini or OpenAI, and that suddenly might accelerate the growth of the Apple ecosystem, the monetization of the whole ecosystem. Maybe they'll raise the prices of certain Apple services. Could definitely be happening. And then, of course, with Tesla, the most expensive of the bunch, it is a bet on robotics and, of course, autonomous vehicles. Moving on to Bank of America 2026 investment outlook and top ideas, they see a bull case of an S&P to reach 8500. 7100 is the base case, I would say only a 5% gain, and the bear case sits at 5500. The key drivers are EPS growth, 14% or valuation contraction on the downside of 10 points. Now, they have here a couple of lists, teams, whatever you want to call it. One is the high conviction stock picks, Semiconductor and AI, the big three, NVIDIA, Broadcom, and then they are choosing Semiconductor equipment makers, Inland Research, CLAC, and also in this case here, ADI. Then they go with Alphabet as the internet AI monetization player, Consumer and Beauty for turnaround, Estee Lauder they're picking here, I know a lot of you pick Elf. And then a small cap growth, over 20% potential, I had no idea what those stickers were. They have here Alignment Healthcare, Kinetic Holdings, Bright Spring Health Services, and Surgery Partners. Never heard of those names. Then as for the key macro teams and trade, the number one trade for them is short hyperscaler corporate bonds. Then you have long commodities, contrarian play for them, oil and gold, long Main Street versus Wall Street, so US small mid caps, international, China, Japan, Germany, and then an inflation hedge, if we go under 2% IPC, go for long 30-year US treasuries. And the bottom line here for them is a core thematic shift from capital spending to monetization and returns in AI. So you have AI infrastructure build-out leading to integration and defense, leading to revenue generation, the platform and services. This is something that we've talked about before. I do think that 2026, especially second half of 2026, that's the year where the market is not only going to ask questions, but would love to get the answers already. Moving to RBC capital markets, top AI and internet picks for 2026. So here again, couple of buckets, consumer and internet alpha picks. They have Airbnb, Meta, Uber, and DoorDash. I like the names. I think Airbnb still has a lot to prove to the markets. I think they could have been doing a lot of things better and they should be moving much, much faster. As for Meta, Uber, and DoorDash, as you know, I own Meta and Uber and I did cover DoorDash, I think a month or two ago. They've been doing very, very well. Next bucket, core software and AI agents, Microsoft, Intuit, and then you have here Salesforce and HubSpot. Okay. I mean, there are definitely some, especially with Salesforce, it's a very cheap name. You might not be getting super high growth, but you're getting a cheap company that is still growing around 10% each and every year with a very, very high margin. As for the rest, maybe we'll have to dive a little bit deeper into Intuit and HubSpot. Then we have infrastructure and supply chain and large cap must-haves, which are Nvidia and Amazon. As for the infrastructure and supply chain, let me know in the comments if you ever heard of these companies before. Moving on to Evercore ISI, this is their best idealist for 2026, the high conviction ideas for a case-shaped recovery and AI-driven future. So here again, we have a couple of buckets, retail and consumer, power automation industrial, media technology, and case-shaped recovery and value place. With regards to the retail and consumer one, we have here Walmart, the number one retail pick for them. They have Amazon, Ulta Beauty, Home Depot, and then Genuine Parts Company. As for the second bucket here, power automation and industrial, GE, Vernova, Honeywell, Hubble, and Schneider Electric and Siemens, top European automation picks. Moving on to media and technology, the number one here is Live Nation Entertainment. Why? Accelerating income, strong live event demand. I did look at the company before, not that interesting. Then as for Mastercard, Mastercard or Visa, or even American Express are all very, very good names, solid, solid compounders. And then you have the last one here, Arista Networks and Apple. As for the last bucket you have here, I assume you pronounce this Mandalese, that's the snacking powerhouse, the one that makes, well, Oreos and all the other snacks that you eat. Colgate, Constellation Brands, Darden Restaurants, so here it pops up again, that name, and then Lithia Motors. That's an $8.2 billion company with a PE of 9.8 and a dividend yield of 0.65%. They also end by giving us their S&P 500 target. By the end of 2026, they have a 7,750 target for the S&P. Moving on to Jeffries, we have two lists here. One is this one, the Secular Innovation Top 10 Global Ideas for 2026. It's not really that interesting. We have some popular names here in Broadcom, Snowflake, New Holdings. Caterpillar has been doing extremely well this year. We have Tencent, CATL as the Chinese names, and then you've got some other companies out there from Japan and also from Australia and France. In this case, Legrand, which is data center power and infrastructure. But then they've got this list right here, their Sector Best Ideas. So they have the Internet Sector, which is the longest list here. You have Applovin, Uber, Spotify, Reddit, Roku, and Zillow. Software, ServiceNow, Shopify, Twilio, HubSpot, so this one gets on the list here yet again. Biotech, why do biotech companies all have some of the strangest names out there? I don't know. Still, two quantum names, IonQ and D-Wave. And then as for mining, they have Freeport and Glencore. Applovin is actually their number one pick here in the Internet Sector. Major ad platform expansion in the first half of 2026 is expected. They're targeting $860, that's the price per share. At the moment, at the time of making this video, the price of the shares are sitting close to $700. As for Uber, you can say the same thing for Lyft here. Robotaxi partnership momentum and demographic expansion. As for the rest, just maybe screenshot it and you can go over every single pick. And so, to end this video, if you had to make a list, let's say five stocks, five of your top picks for 2026, which one would it be? Let me know down in the comments section below. It is quite interesting that none of them actually mentioned a lot of the financial names. I was very surprised not seeing a lot more. Yes, we did see Mastercard, but what about other banks? Regional banks, maybe big banks, maybe SoFi, of course PayPal, Binopulator players. We have not seen, especially not in this list. I'm sure there are other analysts and banks that came out with their own list. Maybe one day we'll cover them, but quite interesting that we have not seen a lot of financial names on these lists. So again, let me know what your list is down in the comments section below. Like, subscribe, do all of that, and we'll see each other in the next one. And if not, well, happy new year. I truly hope we go and kick ass in 2026.