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Investors are in for a rocky second half of the year, so it’s time to take a look at stable earnings growers, says Morgan Stanley’s top strategist Mike Wilson. Stocks have had a solid run to start the year, with all three major averages higher, driven in part by confidence that the Federal Reserve will ease up on its tight money policy later in 2023. The Dow Jones Industrial Average is ahead 2.8%, and the S & P 500 has climbed more than 8.5%. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite is outperforming both, up more than 16%. Wilson does not expect the rally to continue for much longer. While a better-than-expected earnings season has helped fueled investor optimism for a second-half recovery, Wilson said weakness in some parts of the economy that’s showing up in recent macroeconomic data points to trouble ahead. “The driving force behind the resiliency in earnings revisions breadth is the expectation that an upward inflection in 2H ’23 and ’24 EPS growth will come to fruition. It’s also rooted in the view that companies broadly have already right-sized expenses and that margin expansion can now take hold,” Wilson wrote to clients on Monday. “We respectfully disagree with that assertion as it runs counter to our earnings models and our negative operating leverage thesis,” he wrote. Meanwhile, there are also disquieting signs in market internals. Megacap tech stocks continue to bolster the major averages, but the S & P 500 Equal Weighted vs. Cap Weighted Index ratio may be starting to break down, Wilson noted. “We continue to believe that if this were the start of a new bull market, these breadth measures would be showing significant signs of improvement,” Wilson said. In this uncertain climate, the strategist said he prefers stocks with stable earnings. He turned up names in the top 1000 U.S. stocks by market cap that are considered defensive by Morgan Stanley. The stocks rank in the top quintile of earnings stability, and are rated overweight by the firm. They are: Coca-Cola surfaced on Morgan Stanley’s list for stable earnings growers. The soft drink make is higher by almost 2% in 2023. The Atlanta-based icon recently cited price hikes and strong demand for its better-than-expected first-quarter results . Nike was another name on the list. The sports apparel stock is up by more than 9% this year. Baird recently said Nike remains one of its top ideas in a challenging macroeconomic environment, given “strong brand-level drivers, low earnings sensitivity and healthy balance sheet positioning.” UnitedHealth Group was identified as a stable earnings grower. The stock is down more than 6% this year. In April, Morgan Stanley analyst Erin Wright named the stock a top pick , saying the health insurance giant can rally based on its positioning within the Medicare Advantage market. Other stocks named included Humana, BlackRock and Domino’s Pizza.
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