In this piece, we will take a look at the top stocks that are leading the market in investing in their growth according to Goldman Sachs.

With the 2024 US Presidential Election having come to a close, Wall Street can now focus on the future of artificial intelligence, the Federal Reserve’s interest rate cut cycle, and an economy with lower inflation. As was the case during the coronavirus pandemic when historically low interest rates propelled markets to new highs only to come crashing when rates were hiked in 2022, the shifts that are currently taking place should also affect investors for the next couple of years at the very least.

Naturally, this merits a look at what professional analysts are projecting about the future. On this front, investment bank Goldman Sachs recently updated its long-term forecasts for the US stock market. In a research report titled ‘Global Strategy Paper No. 71,  the bank outlined that the upgrade is necessary due to market concentration. This ‘concentration’ refers to roaring investor interest in large and mega-cap stocks primarily due to enthusiasm surrounding artificial intelligence.

Since the biggest technology companies are also the heaviest investors in AI, market returns have also focused on them. As an illustration, consider the performance of the flagship S&P index which is up 30.64% over the past twelve months. Now, consider the performances of Wall Street’s top AI GPU stock, the software company behind Windows, the social networking giant that owns Facebook, Jeff Bezos’ eCommerce company, and the world’s leading search engine provider. Their shares have gained roughly 192.21%, 12.66%, 69.01%, 42.44%, and 27.63% over the same period. Consequently, most mega-cap stocks have driven the market in returns.

As per Goldman, this bifurcation implies that the equal-weight flagship S&P index is likely to outperform the market cap-weighted index “by an annualized 200 bp-800 bp” over the next decade, or between 2024 and 2034. To build its argument, the bank cites historical data which also covers the dotcom boom of the late 1990s and the early 2000s. This bubble is key in understanding today’s market, as it does share some characteristics with the surge in artificial intelligence stocks following OpenAI’s release of ChatGPT and Jensen Huang’s prediction of a trillion dollars of compute capacity waiting for an upgrade.

GS points out that the equal-weight S&P tends to underperform the market weight index sharply before the trend reverses. It cites the market’s performance of the two indexes before the bubble’s ‘pop’ to point out that “the trough in 10-year relative underperformance of the equal-weight vs. cap-weight index occurred during the lead-up to the Dot Com bubble (1990-2000).” This saw the equal weight index lag the market weight index by four percentage points (pp) at the trough or the bottom. After the bottom, the differential flipped and the equal weight index led its counterpart by close to seven points (pp). As per Goldman, the four-point shortfall “has been matched during the past decade (2014-2024E) as the aggregate index has been powered by a few mega-cap Tech stocks and AI euphoria.”

Linking historical performance trends with investor concentration in mega caps and AI stocks, the bank shares that this “extreme level of market concentration (99th percentile) suggests the magnitude of equal-weight outperformance over the next decade should also be stronger than average.” Just how strong can this be? Well GS outlines that the equal weight index can outperform the market weighed index by 8 percentage points. On the flip side, since this is the most bullish forecast, the bank notes that if equal weight index performance reverts to its historical mean over the past 50 years, then “this would imply a less dramatic 2 pp of annualized outperformance.”

While stock market math is all good, other factors also drive its performance. November has seen headlines talk about nothing else but the Presidential Election. Post-election stock performance saw some firms, like Elon Musk’s car company record stunning gains. Goldman’s Shawn Tuteja, who works with exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and baskets, shared some insights about what sectors performed well after the election and whether this outperformance will continue. In a podcast, he outlined that “the biggest themes that we saw play out the day after the election on Wednesday were regional banks and banks getting bought.” He shared that “any sectors that were linked to de-regulation, benefited.” These include “energy, traditional energy versus renewables” with the former up by 4% while the latter losing roughly 10%.

Tuteja added that “the resilience and strength of US tech over the past couple of days post the election” was a standout from the market’s post-election performance in 2016. As to what lies in the future, the Goldman analyst is optimistic. He believes that “what I would expect to come over the next couple of weeks is a continuation on the factor level of the themes that worked post the election.” This is because “it takes time for money to be deployed and for themes to play out.” According to him, in 2016, “regional banks and big banks rallied for months after the election and they outperformed all of the other sectors in the market.” Additionally, while the broader markets might have calmed at a surface level, Tuteja points out that “under the surface, those sector moves become a lot more violent as correlations in the market break, as people start picking winners and losers in the new government regime’s policies.”

For some bank stocks, you can check out 10 Best Local Bank Stocks To Invest In Now and 10 Best Diversified Bank Stocks to Buy Now.

Within this dynamic environment that will see the Fed continue to tailor its interest rate decisions to the economy and companies adjust to a looser monetary policy, firms might also increase their cash spending. In a note covering spending, Goldman shared that the benchmark S&P index firms can increase their spending to 11% next year from 2024’s 8%. This will be driven by rising profits, as the bank believes that earnings “growth alone can explain 40% of next quarter’s cash spending growth.”

Just like it expects equities performance to broaden in the future, the bank also posits that the “typical stock should close the earnings growth gap with the mega-cap tech stocks.” Finally, on the topic of mergers and acquisitions, which slowed down in the wake of historic interest rates, GS is optimistic. It expects “cash M&A will rebound by 20% in 2025,” but cautions that “the potential for tariffs, regulatory changes, and corporate tax reform could meaningfully shift these forecasts.”

Our Methodology

To make our list of Goldman Sachs’ top growth investment stocks, we used the bank’s recent list of stocks and picked out those with a growth investment ratio of 70% or higher. This ratio is defined as the ratio of capital expenditure and R&D spending excluding depreciation over a firm’s cash flow from operations.

For these stocks, we also mentioned the number of hedge fund investors. The reason is simple: our research has shown that we can outperform the market by imitating the top stock picks of the best hedge funds. Our quarterly newsletter’s strategy selects 14 small-cap and large-cap stocks every quarter and has returned 275% since May 2014, beating its benchmark by 150 percentage points. (see more details here).

34. Autodesk, Inc. (NASDAQ:ADSK)

Growth Investment Ratio: 70%

Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 55

Autodesk, Inc. (NASDAQ:ADSK) is a productivity software firm that caters to the needs of engineering, architecture, construction, and other industries. As a result, its business is dependent on the broader economic health and activity in the real estate and industrial sectors. For the six months ending in June 2024, 47% of Autodesk, Inc. (NASDAQ:ADSK)’s $2.9 billion in revenue came from the architecture, engineering, and construction industries. Consequently, the health of this sector, driven primarily by interest rates, is key to the firm’s hypothesis. Unlike other productivity software companies, namely Adobe, Autodesk, Inc. (NASDAQ:ADSK) is yet to fully blend artificial intelligence into its product mix. This opens up significant potential for the firm to expand its product offerings to an industry that is typically hesitant to adopt new technologies due to the wide-scale impacts of such decisions. Autodesk, Inc. (NASDAQ:ADSK) also benefits from the fact that its significant market share provides it with strong customer loyalty due to high switching costs. Additionally, the software-centered nature of its business also enables Autodesk, Inc. (NASDAQ:ADSK) to earn subscription revenue and keep costs low.

Polen Capital mentioned Autodesk, Inc. (NASDAQ:ADSK) in its Q2 2024 investor letter. Here is what the fund said:

“With Autodesk, most of the stock’s price weakness came in April. The company announced that it would delay the release of its earnings and 10-K filing as it launches an internal investigation regarding its practices on some non-GAAP financial metrics. Upon further analysis, we were encouraged to hear that they were taking this very seriously and being very comprehensive in their investigation. Ultimately, [it] announced it was closing the investigation and that no re-statements would be required. As discussed in the following section, we chose to exit the position in favor of a more attractive investment.

. . . .We sold our small position in Autodesk to help fund our purchase of Shopify. We still think Autodesk is an advantaged business, with 95%+ recurring revenue, dominant in its end market, and nice tailwinds behind digitization in that end market. It should be a durable grower over time, perhaps with continued fits and starts, but we found the risk-reward around Shopify to be more compelling”

33. eBay Inc. (NASDAQ:EBAY)

Growth Investment Ratio: 71%

Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 38

eBay Inc. (NASDAQ:EBAY) is a well-known e-commerce retailer that has been operating since the start of the dotcom era of the 1990s. However, unlike Amazon, the firm’s decision to focus primarily on third-party sellers and not bulk merchants has meant that it has been unable to grow to Amazon’s scale. Yet, like Amazon and other retailers, eBay Inc. (NASDAQ:EBAY) also depends on high volumes to drive margins and earn profit. The firm has undertaken a new strategy to attract high-spenders to its platform by offering them hard-to-find items and then retaining them by offering other products. eBay Inc. (NASDAQ:EBAY) is also expanding its consumer-to-consumer business model globally to drive volumes in its marketplace. Subsequently, this strategy is now central to the firm’s hypothesis and should influence the share price. The strategy also tends to perform well in an economy where inflation is slowing. As a result, eBay Inc. (NASDAQ:EBAY) could see tailwinds in the future contingent on successful management execution.

During the Q3 2024 earnings call eBay Inc. (NASDAQ:EBAY)’s management shared details for its new strategy. Here is what they said:

“One of the key building blocks underpinning our return to positive GMV growth has been our geo-specific investment, where we leverage our innovation playbook from focused categories to better serve customer needs at the local level. While many of these product experience changes benefit all sellers and buyers, we are particularly focused on consumer-to-consumer or C2C sellers for several reasons. C2C sellers bring some of the most unique inventory to eBay and are typically less price sensitive than B2C sellers. C2C sellers accelerate e-commerce as roughly 60% of their GMV comes from used and refurbished items compared to 40% for our marketplace overall.

Selling on eBay also creates a flywheel effect that stimulates incremental GMV as buyers who sell purchased roughly twice as much on eBay as non-sellers with most of their incremental spend supporting small businesses. As a reminder, our first major geo-specific initiative launched in Germany in March of 2023, and more than 18 months later, we continue to see significantly higher customer satisfaction or CSAT and improved GMV trends for the overall German market. This past April, we rolled out significant enhancements in the UK for pre-owned apparel categories. These improvements included simplified tools for selling and new tools to drive demand through enhanced discovery like Explore and Shop the look. Since then, we have observed material improvements to key C2C metrics like CSAT and active sellers alongside a double-digit improvement in C2C GMV growth in pre-owned apparel versus our prior baseline.”