Fun With Dashboards

Booyah 38 for 2016

We take a look at the consensus outlooks (both short term, or 1-year, and the long term forecasts) for the best stocks for 2016 featured by Jim “Booyah” Cramer. We follow Jim for the educational slant that he often provides … and point out that his track record is better than most of his critics believe. Our community of investors may well remember the group book report that we shared via Get Rich Carefully (March 2015). Our favorites from the field would be Celgene (CELG), Biogen IDEC (BIIB), Under Armour (UA), Google (GOOG or GOOGL) and Starbucks (SBUX).

TheStreet’s Jim Cramer has a theory on what’s ailing the stock market these days.

The theory goes that there is a “scarcity” of investable stocks, with the exception of a handful of winners across sectors.

“I think we are stuck in an era where we are beginning to recognize that we have too many stocks, too many public companies, too many companies that don’t warrant our attention or our investment in,” Cramer said in prepared remarks for his keynote speech at The Deal Economy: Predictions and Perspectives for 2016 and featured at 38 Annointed Stocks To Add To Your 2016 Portfolio.

Booyah 38 For 2016 Dashboard

Cramer’s (38) stock selections are presented here, alphabetically and will be tracked on the dashboard at: Booyah 38. One of the first things we notice is that the overall average long-term forecast is a mere 5.2% when the average stock has a median long-term return forecast (MIPAR) of approximately 7.5%. This is some of what Cramer is getting at when he talks scarcity. Many of these stocks during a protracted recovery with persistent recessionary characteristics have already attracted a lot of attention from investors. Many of them can be considered defensive or protective measures against corrections or bears.

They’re largely from the S&P 500. In fact, only two hail (Palo Alto Networks & Ulta) from “outside the S&P 1500” with only one, Treehouse Foods (THS) from the S&P 400 Mid-Caps. But Cramer’s selections do manage to average a growth forecast of 10.3% due largely to what might be considered a first cousin of our Smoothie Investing portfolio. Recall that the Smoothie 20 was built from equal parts established blue chip companies and NASDAQ promising stars last summer. The Booyah 38 certainly displays some essence of this.

Quality (75.7) is also a little thin. If scarcity and low return forecasts are an issue — seeking high-quality companies is prudent protection and can be an effective oasis.

Booyah 38 For 2016: Dashboard.

Booyah 38: The Long Of It

Our “forensic review” of Cramer’s stock selections once again underscores some of the challenges and differences in the analyst community. As shown here, there’s a lot of red ink dripping in the Value Line and Morningstar columns. In fact the average long-term return forecast for the Booyah 38 is 0.1%. Fair value is another long-term measure — derived from a discounted cash flow analysis — as performed by Morningstar, S&P and others … The comparison of current price to fair value (P/FV) displays stocks that are attractive (<100%) versus those considered overvalued (P/FV > 100%).

The average P/FV (Morningstar) is 110% and S&P checks in a little more favorably at 104%.

Here’s the Booyah 38 ranked by MANIFEST Rank.

Booyah 38: The Short Of It

But this is really all about the next year, 2016. We gauge expectations using a number of resources including S&P, the analyst consensus estimates (ACE via finance.yahoo.com) and the most influential rhinos (Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch and any investment firm with Morgan embedded in the title). We do this with full awareness of the elusiveness, evolution and ebbing nature of forecasts. See: Ritholtz on Forecasting

The median 1-year total return forecast for the Value Line Standard Edition population ($VLE) for the three sources displayed here is:

• Analyst Consensus Estimates (ACE) = 16.7%
• Standard & Poor’s (S&P) = 13.4%
• Goldman Sachs & Other Rhinos (‘GS’) = 14.6%

The average from the Booyah 38 checks in at 11-13% for the companies displayed here.

Closing Thoughts

As we mentioned, 35-of-the-38 stocks are in the S&P 500, so it’s worth wondering if this many stocks aren’t “designed” pretty much to track the S&P 500 (VFINX) for 2016 … and leaving out companies like Apple (AAPL) seems a little precarious.

Just for kicks the average 1-year total return outlook (ACE) for the S&P 500 is 15.6%.

Contrast this with Eddy Elfenbein’s Buy List efforts and our recent Gone Shopping With Eddy analysis of his 2016 selections (due out in a few days — we will let you know). We don’t know precisely how Crossing Wall Street hues their shopping list down to size but the evidence suggests some attention to quality … and the selections seem to have a dual short-term and long-term favorability that seems to have served Eddy well.

We hope everybody does well, shops carefully and experiences the best returns. Booyah!