We recently published a list of Jim Cramer’s Latest Calls: 10 Stocks to Buy and Sell Now. Since UnitedHealth Group Inc (NYSE:UNH) ranks 2nd on the list, it deserves a deeper look.
Jim Cramer in a recent program on CNBC yet again talked about the importance of investing in individual stocks and said with discipline and patience beginner investors can beat the market by picking solid stocks with strong fundamentals.
“If you are willing to put in the work, regular people can trounce the averages as long as you are disciplined and you follow the rules,” Cramer said.
Talking about his stock-picking process, Cramer said that he likes to “start” hunting for stocks by going through the list of stocks making new highs. This is a good start, according to Cramer, because a lot of times momentum keeps pushing the same stocks higher and higher unless something fundamentally changes. Cramer said he does not recommend buying stocks when they are trading at new highs. Instead, he waits for a pullback.
“New high list is not a shopping list it’s an inspirational list. You keep an eye on those names and then wait for them to come down before you pull the trigger,” Cramer said.
Cramer said that you should only pile into stocks on a pullback if you believe they will rebound for reasons “unrelated to the broader market.”
For this article, we picked 10 key stocks Jim Cramer is talking about during his programs these days. With each stock, we have mentioned the number of hedge fund investors. Why are we interested in 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).
UnitedHealth Group Inc (NYSE:UNH)
Number of Hedge Fund Investors: 114
Cramer said in a recent program that UnitedHealth Group Inc (NYSE:UNH) has surprisingly been an outperformer on Fed rate cuts.
“But I wouldn’t recommend buying it right here unless the Fed is desperately cutting rates because the economy is falling apart – then you buy UnitedHealth Group Inc (NYSE:UNH). I don’t see that happening.”
UnitedHealth Group Inc (NYSE:UNH) is one of the biggest managed healthcare players globally, with segments like UnitedHealthcare, OptumRx, OptumInsight, and OptumHealth. Analysts believe UNH has strong growth catalysts for 2025 because it may be able to raise prices. BofA expects the company’s EPS to approach $28 this year, with steady growth in the low double digits through 2026. Revenue growth is expected by Wall Street in the range of 7% to 8% annually. While dividends are forecasted to rise by more than 10% each year through 2026, the yield may remain under 2%, and its trailing 12-month free cash flow yield is modest at around 1%. Based on these factors, UnitedHealth Group Inc (NYSE:UNH) forward P/E of 20 looks attractive.
Invesco Growth and Income Fund stated the following regarding UnitedHealth Group Incorporated (NYSE:UNH) in its Q2 2024 investor letter:
“UnitedHealth Group Incorporated (NYSE:UNH): Like many managed care providers, United Health has come under pressure from rising medical costs and higher-than-expected utilization. The stock is currently undervalued based on our analysis. We view the company as a high-quality compounder with secular growth opportunities in the managed care segment. The US Presidential election may cause additional near-term uncertainty, but we believe United Health will be able to rebound once pricing and utilization issues normalize.”
Overall, UnitedHealth Group Inc (NYSE:UNH) ranks 2nd on Insider Monkey’s list titled Jim Cramer’s Latest Calls: 10 Stocks to Buy and Sell Now. While we acknowledge the potential of UnitedHealth Group Inc (NYSE:UNH), our conviction lies in the belief that AI stocks hold greater promise for delivering higher returns, and doing so within a shorter timeframe. If you are looking for an 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.
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Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.