Diamond (DIA) Expectations

The last few years have been pretty good to the Dow 30 stocks — after spending the first ten years of this century in the dog house. The trailing 5-year annualized return is 15.0% versus the Wilshire 5000 at 16.8%. So the other 4970 stocks have actually continued to outshine the Dow 30.

One of the things we’ve noticed is that the renaissance of many of these stocks has persisted — with continuing improvement in profitability, etc. — while many companies are under more margin pressure and “deceleration.”

Here’s a quick look at our 5-year forecasts for the Dow 30 as well as the Value Line low total return 3-5 year forecast. We’ve also included a quick look at Morningstar and S&P price-to-fair value (P/FV) metrics. (100% = fairly valued … <100% is potentially attractive)

In keeping with some of the Groundhog shopping, we also display the 1-year outlooks based on analyst consensus and S&P target prices.

Nutshell: Microsoft (MSFT) and General Electric (GE) are consensus favorites. S&P thinks JP Morgan (JPM) is a steal. There’s an IBM (IBM) bandwagon at Morningstar. Value Line is skeptical about the long-term forecast for Disney (DIS), Cisco Systems (CSCO) and Home Depot (HD). S&P doesn’t want Coca-Cola (KO) … not even with a 10-foot pole. Morningstar thinks United Health (UNH) is overvalued, too. S&P is scratching their heads over Exxon Mobil (XOM) and Chevron (CVX) … and we’ll stay tuned to see what conclusions are reached by Team Stovall.