Goldman Sachs: These 5 Stocks Are Perfect For Trade War Volatility

As global trade tensions play havoc with the financial markets, one strategy is to consider stocks with relatively large domestic sales exposure. This is the tactic recommended by Goldman Sachs.

“Below the surface of the market, trade conflict would benefit the performance of the most domestic-facing U.S. stocks relative to the most foreign-facing firms,” the firm says. Most encouragingly, the firm’s chief US economist- Jan Hatzius- is still bullish on the general economy despite China’s recent retaliation. He told CNBC: “We think that means there is more risk there, but not enough for us to change our baseline forecast for an economy that is growing above trend and a Federal Reserve that continues to hike once a quarter.”

So with this in mind, we extracted five intriguing stock ideas from Goldman Sachs’ domestic sales basket list. As you will see, all of these stocks have little to no international exposure.

At the same time, we delve into the outlook on these stocks from TipRanks’ top analysts. We rank analysts based on their success rate and average return so that you can follow the advice of analysts who consistently crush the market.

Let’s take a closer look now:

CVS Health

100% US Sales

Drugstore giant CVS Health (NYSE:CVS) has 100% support from top analysts right now. In the last three months, the stock has received three back-to-back buy ratings from the Street’s best-performing analysts. And luckily for investors, on average these analysts are predicting 48% upside potential from the current share price.

CVS Health is currently fighting hard to push through a massive $69 billion deal with one of the US’s biggest health insurers: Aetna (NYSE:AET). Oppenheimer’s Mohan Naidu has his fingers crossed that the deal will go through and says: “Increasing confidence on the successful Aetna transaction makes us excited.” He believes the deal would “strengthen CVS’s position and have significant positive long-term impact.”

Naidu has a $92 price target on CVS (45% upside potential). The CVS/AET deal is currently expected to close in the second half of this year.

Dollar General 

100% US Sales

In the face of growing e-commerce pressure, retail stores need to be special to succeed. Luckily Dollar General (NYSE:DG) is one of the cheapest stores around. The company defied challenging retail conditions with solid Q4 results and upbeat guidance. Comps increased 3.3%, easily topping expectations of +2.5%, and gross margins rose a healthy 50 bps.

Five-star Oppenheimer analyst Rupesh Parikh has just reiterated his DG buy rating. He notes that management is targeting at least 10% EPS growth longer-term, which- if achieved- represents ‘standout growth potential’.

“We continue to look favorably upon DG’s prospects, and we still see an outlook for double-digit appreciation from here. As a result, we would take advantage of any potential weakness.” His $108 price target indicates 14% upside from the current share price.

CSX Corp

100% US Sales

CSX (NYSE:CSX) is a leading supplier of rail-based freight transportation in North America, with approx. 21,000 miles of track. The company is an intriguing stock to follow right now. Following the sudden death of CEO and railroad legend Hunter Harrison, new CEO James Foote is targeting 20% efficiency gains and cutbacks in numerous areas.

Top Susquehanna analyst Bascome Majors has just attended CSX’s first investor day with Foote as CEO. He reports that Foote and the management team “came across as cohesive, with palpable conviction in executing the transformation (Hunter) started a year ago.”

“We believe CSX presented a more unified management front than most investors expected, with a sense of real conviction toward executing the multi-year plan in place and delivering industry-leading profit and cash flow growth” concludes Major. As a result, he reiterated his buy rating with a bullish $68 price target (25% upside potential).

Overall the Street has a cautiously optimistic take on CSX right now. Out of the 10 analysts recently polled by TipRanks, we found 7 buy ratings, 2 hold ratings and 1 sell rating. Meanwhile the $63 average analyst price target suggests 16% upside potential from current levels.

Intuit

95% US Sales

California-based Intuit (Nasdaq:INTU) develops and sells accounting and tax preparation software to small businesses and individuals. On the back of INTU’s Q2 earnings beat, one of TipRanks’ Top 100 analysts, Argus Research’s Jim Kelleher, ramped up his price target from $175 to $195. Even with a strong two-year run the stock is still attractively priced right now cheers Kelleher. INTU boasts a strong balance sheet and substantial free cash flow to boot.

Looking further ahead, Kelleher believes INTU will be a key beneficiary from the “rise of the entrepreneurial economy and the demise of the ‘job-for-life’ mentality.” As the number of small businesses and the self-employed grows, so too will their accounting and tax needs. In total top analysts are split 50/50 between Buy and Hold.

Wells Fargo 

100% US Sales

Wells Fargo (NYSE:WFC) may only have a Hold top analyst consensus rating- but it is worth noting that the stock has received 2 upgrades in the last week. Most notably one of these upgrades is from financial expert Marty Mosby of Vining Sparks. As we can see from his ranking, his recommendations tend to be on the money. He is now bullish on WFC’s 2018 earnings and explains that EPS can grow to 20% due to recent rate hikes, stable credit costs and tax reform.

“The 7% pullback over the past 2 months has pushed our Large Cap U.S. Banks back towards the middle of our expected trading range, and allowed us to upgrade WFC to “Strong Buy,” as we believe this correction has provided investors with a better entry point into the Large Cap U.S. Banks, given the upcoming improvement in profitability in 2018E” explains Mosby.

Disclaimer: TipRanks is an independent cloud based service that measures and ranks digitally published financial advice. TipRanks' natural language processing (NLP) algorithms aggregate and ...

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