Is UnitedHealth Group Incorporated (UNH) the Best Stock for Beginners With Little Money?

We recently compiled a list of the 10 Best Stocks for Beginners with Little Money According to Hedge Funds. In this article, we are going to take a look at where UnitedHealth Group Incorporated (NYSE:UNH) stands against the other beginner-friendly stocks.

Headlines from the US Stock Market

Uncertainty sweeps across the US with the incoming administration’s potential policies. Simultaneously, the Federal Reserve has decided to pause its rate-cutting cycle and the decision to resume easing is doubtful amidst Trump’s trade policies which are being deemed inflationary. Tariffs on foreign imports are considered a risk of reviving inflation. According to Reuters, Dustin Reid, chief strategist of fixed income at Mackenzie Investments in Toronto, reiterated the uncertainty looming as follows:

“Everything that is going on right now, from economic data to markets news and tariffs, adds up to a lot more uncertainty across all markets”

Recently, technology stocks benefitting from the business potential of AI witnessed a deep shock as Chinese startup DeepSeek revealed a large language model that can compete with American AI giants but at a fraction of the cost of OpenAI’s, Google’s, or Meta’s popular AI models. DeepSeek unveiled a free, open-source large language model that it claims took only two months and less than $6 to build.

The event raised a lot of concerns over America’s leadership in the AI sector and how big tech giants are investing heavily in AI models and data centers while DeepSeek somehow developed a highly competitive model without having as much compute as U.S. hyperscalers, as pointed out by Srini Pajjuri, semiconductor analyst at Raymond James. While the US has been trying to limit China’s access to the chips powering advanced AI systems, the news about DeepSeek’s chatbot making it to most-downloaded free app in the US on Apple’s App Store demonstrates the country’s rapid gains in the sector.

Our Methodology:

In order to compile a list of the 10 best stocks for beginners with little money according to hedge funds, we used a consensus of similar rankings as well as blue-chip ETFs. Moving on, we shortlisted the top 10 stocks from our list which had the highest number of hedge fund holders. The 10 best stocks for beginners with little money according to hedge funds have been arranged in ascending order of their hedge fund holders as of Q3.

At Insider Monkey we are obsessed with the stocks that hedge funds pile into. 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).

Is UnitedHealth Group (UNH) the Best Stock for Beginners with Little Money According to Hedge Funds?

A senior healthcare professional giving advice to a patient in a clinic.

UnitedHealth Group Incorporated (NYSE:UNH)

Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 112

UnitedHealth Group Incorporated (NYSE:UNH) is a health care and well-being company that strives to make health care work better through two distinct businesses, Optum and UnitedHealthcare.

With the aforementioned diversified and complimentary businesses, UnitedHealth Group Incorporated (NYSE:UNH) reinforces its strong market position in the health services industry. Value-based care is core to UNH’s mission which is proven to drive better health outcomes at a lower cost and hence, UNH serves people in value-based care in dozens of geographies. The healthcare company is laying a foundation to pave the way for more people to benefit from integrated, patient-centered care and bringing innovation to the entire healthcare system through its five strategic growth priorities including care delivery, health benefits, health technology, financial services, and pharmacy care.

The firm showed diversified growth in serving people more extensively at the Optum and UnitedHealthcare businesses as it closed 2024. 2024 revenues grew 8% year-over-year. While domestic consumers catered to by UnitedHealthcare grew 2.1 million, value-based care patients served by Optum grew 600,000. UNH is positioned well for growth in 2025, making high-quality and affordable healthcare more accessible as well as deeming the health system easier to navigate for patients and providers.

Overall UNH ranks 10th on our list of the best stocks for beginners with little money according to hedge funds. While we acknowledge the potential of UNH as an investment, our conviction lies in the belief that some deeply undervalued AI stocks hold greater promise for delivering higher returns, and doing so within a shorter timeframe. If you are looking for a deeply undervalued AI stock that is more promising than UNH but that trades at less than 5 times its earnings, check out our report about the cheapest AI stock.

READ NEXT: 20 Best AI Stocks To Buy Now and Complete List of 59 AI Companies Under $2 Billion in Market Cap.

Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.