It is no secret at all that 2020 has been nothing short of a crazy year. The COVID-19 pandemic wrecked the economy. It seems that half of the country is still working from home with no set date of returning to an office. Over 13 million Americans are still without a job, and the economic recovery has been so unevenly stacked that many industries are still deep in recession. The irony of it all? The stock market has managed to recover all of its losses from March and return to all-time highs.
While this may be a time when the economic irony became a paradox, the reality is that the market’s return to all-time highs has been an act of market mechanics rather than a broad-based gain that lifts all boats together. Until the peak of last week, the leadership from Apple, Microsoft, Amazon and other key darlings were the main culprits for the stock market’s return to all-time highs.
At the start of 2020, when the bull market was still raging onward and upward, the skies were pointing toward higher index values for the Dow Jones industrial index, the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq. And that is exactly what was happening, at least right up until Americans figured out that “that flu-thing in China” was for real and would bring big problems to America and the rest of the world.
At the start of 2020, the 24/7 Wall St. official baseline model was for the Dow to generate a total return of 7.4% and rise to roughly 30,650 by the end of this year. While that is more than 10% higher than the 27,700 level now, this may still be very achievable before year’s end. After all, the Dow’s high is up above 29,500, and both the S&P 500 and Nasdaq managed to hit all-time highs again. Much of the great economic recovery has yet to be realized, and a very large portion of the value and base economy did not benefit as much as the top market darlings. The sell-off after September 1 may have even helped this possibility for a much higher year-end closing.
This bullish scenario may sound like ridiculous euphoria, like it requires rose-colored glasses. Yet, we know of no single investor who went on the record in public during the dog days of March after the most rapid bull-to-bear market in history who predicted that stocks would return to all-time highs any time soon (let alone a few months). A few trillion in economic stimulus and hopes of a vaccine in the coming months, and here you are.
Another big risk is that there is also the election coming in November. This absolutely will be a wild card that can play a huge role in how the year 2020 turns out. In fact, many technicians and fundamental investors already have warned that volatility will rise ahead of the election, and there are major concerns that a formal election winner won’t be known until weeks after election day.
There are of course no guarantees that the stock market will return to higher levels even, if the economic recovery continues. In fact, we would be even more surprised than most if the recovery were to get back in a straight line and lift all stocks with it. We have all been more than surprised by the massive comeback already seen.
Here is how the Dow can still continue to rise and hit that 30,000 mark by year’s end. Remember, the Dow is a stock price-weighted index rather than an adjusted market-cap-weighted index.
Amgen Inc. (NASDAQ: AMGN) is in a dead running tie with Salesforce.com over the #3 and #4 weighting in the Dow at about 5.8%. It trades at about $241 a share. It replaced Pfizer in the index and is the world’s first biotech stock to be a member of the Dow.
Amgen still has a $141 billion market cap, but its recent high of $264.97 is still barely higher than the consensus analyst target price of $262.76. The brokerage firm Jefferies went as high as a $300 price target over the summer, and Amgen offers a pharma-esque dividend yield of 2.6%.
Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) recently concluded its stock split that caused plenty of mental excitement while changing literally nothing about its fundamentals. Now that Apple went down to $110, this stock has fallen from a post-split high of $137.98 before any recent attempts to recover. Its weighting has gone from over 10% and the highest weighting in the Dow down to 19th place and less than a 3% index weighting. That is even with close to a $2 trillion market cap as the world’s largest company.
Apple’s consensus target price is now closer to $116, but we still see $140 and $150 price targets from the bullish analysts.
Boeing Co. (NYSE: BA) seems to keep having waves of bad news, and the only good news seems to be that the news was less bad than a month or two earlier. That concerns deliveries, orders and even quality. Hope remains that the FAA will recertify the grounded 737 Max, and any vaccine for COVID-19 likely will be followed by a healthier airline industry.
With Boeing’s stock close to $158, the consensus target price is almost $175.00 and no one cares any longer that Boeing was a $400 stock back in early 2019 because it was a different world then.
Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (NYSE: GS) has suffered with other financial stocks, but at close to $201 apiece, its shares are actually only down about 20% from a year-high. The investment banking powerhouse is expanding its retail presence, and it also has the seventh-highest weighting in the Dow at close to 4.8%. Its Malaysia woes are basically gone, and its investment operations and investment banking operations should be doing quite well.
If there are any surprises to the upside, Goldman Sachs could be viewed as “Golden Slacks” all over again, and it could be viewed as a very cheap stock with room for its 2.5% dividend yield to rise. Its consensus target price is above $247, and the stock peaked above $260 in early 2018.
Home Depot Inc. (NYSE: HD) was last seen trading close to $275. Despite an all-time high of $292.95, its consensus price target is just above $300. BofA Securities even raised its own target to $330 on Home Depot shares. While this was looking grim at the peak-panic of the recession, it turns out that now everyone is still doing work on their homes. They are gardening, replacing old appliances, and painting.
It’s all good for Home Depot right now, and it is 6.5% of the Dow, as its second-highest rating now. Despite such a strong gain, it has a 2.1% dividend yield to boot.
Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT) was the largest tech company by market cap a couple decades ago, and it still is an absolute leader with a $1.5 trillion market cap. Because its stock has risen, the dividend yield is now only about 1%.
If technology recovers from its September selling period, Microsoft should win as a stock, and it is about to have a lot of excitement as the upcoming Xbox refresh cycle is imminent ahead of the 2020 holiday season. Its most recent $203 stock price is down from a high of $232.86, and its consensus target price is up at $228.71.
Salesforce.com Inc. (NYSE: CRM) is among the newest of the Dow stocks. Its $240 share price had it in a dead heat for being #3 or #4 in the Dow’s weighting because of price. That comes with a 5.9% weighting, and at $241 a share, it has an all-time high of $284.50 and a consensus target price of $273.42.
There was a massive round of excitement after its earnings, and that added more gains, as this is now viewed no longer just as a new economy stock. Salesforce doesn’t even pay a dividend. Any technology recovery in the market is likely to be extra positive for Salesforce.com.
UnitedHealth Group Inc. (NYSE: UNH) is still down about 10% from its highs, but as the highest stock price (nearly $300), it has the largest Dow weighting of the 30 components. UnitedHealth should live on regardless of how health care is treated, because of the current regime and regime hopefuls pushing the Medicare for All platform.
The all-time high of $324.50 is still handily under its consensus target price of $345.36. If its business is now not at risk, it may be worth a lot more than 16 times future earnings. UnitedHealth also has plenty of room to raise its dividend from 1.6%.
Visa Inc. (NYSE: V) manages to hang in there, no matter the threat of startups in fintech wanting a slice of its cake. At $200 a share, Visa is down less than 10% from its high, and the consensus analyst target is above $223, for the eighth-highest weighting in the Dow at a 4.7%.
Visa’s 0.6% dividend is almost embarrassingly low, and the company could decide to be way more generous than just paying out 20% of adjusting earnings to shareholders. This could all rekindle interest and get Visa back to its historic growth patterns and help the stock reach new highs.
Using this baseline model has worked well for trying to look at a peak value rather than for a year-end price target. That said, all investment models have imperfections and may not reflect some drastic unknown changes that await, and there always seems to be some unexpected winners and some unexpected losers over the course of any given year.
It would not require much more than two or three of these upside scenarios to create even higher upside in 2020. There is no preset rule for where stocks will go over the course of any given year.
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