- RBC’s top researchers in the US, Europe, and Asia just updated their quarterly list of highest-conviction stock picks for the year.
- Their newest choices for 2021 represent a clear bet on a recovering global economy, as they’re adding energy, industrial, and financial companies from around the world.
- The average stock on RBC’s list outperformed the S&P 500 during the market’s fourth-quarter surge and doubled the gain recorded by an MSCI global benchmark.
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Predicting what’s going to happen in 2021 takes some nerve after all the surprising twists of last year, but the experts have to try.
A group of RBC’s top stock researchers are making their bets once again by updating their list of 30 top global stocks for the year. And as unpredictable as 2020 was, they can say they did better than the crowd.
The average return for the stocks in the latest top-30 list was 15.6% to investors in the fourth quarter. That handily beat the S&P 500, according to a note put together by Global Head of Research Graeme Pearson, Head of US Equity Research Mark Odendahl, Head of Canadian and Asia-Pacific Research André‐Philippe Hardy, and Head of European Research Michael Hall.
Over the course of the year, RBC’s top-30 list, which is updated once per quarter, returned an average of 31.9%. That doubles the return of the MSCI World Net Total Return Index, a global benchmark, and far surpasses the S&P 500’s gain of 18.4%.
The researchers are not making predictions about the routes the stocks will take in 2021, but that’s a reason to have some confidence in their track record.
Many of the newest additions to the list come from cyclical sectors like energy and industrials. Those first-quarter additions are Arch Capital, Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria, CenterPoint Energy, Dollar Tree, Element Fleet Management, Enterprise Products Partners, General Electric, Kingfisher, Nike, SSE, and Mosaic.
The stocks are arranged from lowest to highest based on their implied returns, or the return RBC expects based on its price targets on the stocks and the dividends the companies pay. Those return figures are from calculations as of December 31.
