It must be a difficult market to pick with so many of our Super Stock Selectors choosing not to respond this week.
But even though their numbers are few, National Australia Bank still manages to get more than one like.
After a big sell off, the banks are reasonably valued at these prices. Paul Rickard likes the sector in general and is most positive on NAB.
Charlie Aitken is also a big fan, devoting an entire article to it last week [1].
Raymond Chan says they continue to buy the bank on its way up.
IG Markets’ Evan Lucas is more generalist in his likes today, picking the entire ASX/S&P 200. He says, “the ASX is trading at a 9% discount to the MSCI World index currently and that gap is likely to close in coming weeks.”
The Australian index is underperforming global indices from as low as 4% to Europe to 23% to Asia Ex-Japan. The US is outperforming the ASX by 13%.
“International investors will want to rotate into the value that has been created by the ASX’s 9% decline,” Lucas says.
It seems that Elio D’Amato from Lincoln Indicators is a big fan of Warren Buffett and his investment, via Berkshire Hathaway, into Insurance Australia Group.
While Australian operations have been challenging for the last 12 months due to storms, tropical cyclones and other weather events, he says IAG continues to deliver a high consistent fully franked dividend yield.
“Its recent strategic arrangement with Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway could be a catalyst for positive longer term growth prospects,” D’Amato says.
[2]On the other side of the ledger, companies in the media space get a drubbing and Michael McCarthy from CMC Markets doesn’t like AGL Limited.
“Trading within 5% of its all-time high following the announcement of the opening of a Newcastle gas storage facility, AGL is ripe for portfolio trimming,” he says.
Our Super Stock Selectors is a survey of prominent analysts, brokers and fund managers. Each week we ask them to name a stock they like, and one they don’t like. We purposely ask for ‘likes’ and ‘dislikes’ instead of recommendations, so it provides an idea of what the market is looking at, rather than firm buys or sells.
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