It’s in our nature to want more: More money. More friends. More muscle. More food. A more luxurious car. And, of course, more gains by way of the stock market.
How can I tell after a year in which the S&P 500’s (^GSPC) total return was 17.88%, bringing the index’s three-year total return to 86.11%? Because I am always getting asked by people for stock ideas, especially after years of the market basically moving up and to the right.
As a rule, I don’t give out stock ideas, as that is no longer my career (I was an analyst for a decade). So I come to you at the start of 2026 with a tidy list of stock ideas provided by my contacts.
I caution that I am not endorsing the picks of these money management pros. This is not me saying to dump your life savings into these stocks or even buy a single share.
Do your homework on each one. In doing so, you may find you like other stocks in the industry better.
“One chip company in the world is fueling the AI revolution, and that’s Nvidia. And I think as it plays out, the [earnings] numbers are significantly underestimated. I think 15% to 20% at a minimum [earnings growth] going into 2026. You put that together, and I think we’re looking at a $250 stock in a base case to end 2026.”
“We love Palantir. From a defense standpoint, they are the leader in AI and data, with Defense Department approval and usage. And then beyond that, corporate adoption and sovereign adoption. So we think the name continues [to go higher]. It’s one of those names, you can’t justify it from a valuation standpoint. But the narrative is quite compelling. And that can drive stocks for a very long time, like it did Amazon for the first 20 years of Amazon’s post-IPO life.”
“I think Broadcom is a little misunderstood. We were big buyers of it during COVID actually when it was giving you over a 3% dividend yield. So you know we like dividends. So what I like about it is the VMware side of the business and the programable side. These are very specialized chips. So not competing as much with Nvidia, and I think they’re creating their own market. And I think their growth rate and the ownership has been tremendous.
“We’ve been trimming this position because it grew to so much in our accounts. I mean, we had up to 7% of our portfolio in Broadcom. We didn’t want that much. We still like it, but we’re not expecting the 5,060% return. We’d be very happy with Broadcom [returning] about 10%.”
