Bank of America published a list of five stocks positioned for upside amid market uncertainty. They did not explain how uncertainty creates positioning or what positioning means when nobody knows which direction the market will move. They just said it.
The phrase "plenty of room to run" appeared in the analyst note. Room to run. As if stocks are greyhounds at a track and not mathematical abstractions traded by algorithms that execute four million orders while you blink. But sure. Room.
These analysts get paid seven figures to identify stocks with upside during uncertainty, which is like getting paid to identify wet things during a rainstorm. Every stock has upside amid uncertainty. That's what uncertain means. The word doing all the work here is "best," and they offered no definition of best, no time frame, no benchmark, no criteria. Just best. Trust us.
Retail traders will read this headline and assume Bank of America performed some proprietary analysis involving satellite data or credit card spending or the migration patterns of CFOs. What actually happened is five analysts submitted their favorite tickers to a committee, someone made sure they weren't all in the same sector, and a managing director approved it during a bathroom break.
The stocks were not named in the headline. You have to click through for that. You have to give them the traffic, the engagement, the ad impression, just to find out which five companies analysts believe will not completely f*ck you. That's the value proposition. Subscribe to learn which stocks might only partially destroy your retirement.
Analysts at major banks exist to create the illusion that someone with a Bloomberg terminal knows something you don't. They do not. They know how to write a price target with enough wiggle room that they're never fully wrong and how to never, ever apologize when they are.
Bank of America says these five stocks are best positioned, and somewhere a day trader is already filling out a margin application.
Photo by Oren Elbaz on Unsplash
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