4 High-Quality Bargains in an Uncertain Market

 

These undervalued wide-moat stocks earn low uncertainty ratings.


 


Stock investors have experienced quite the roller-coaster ride during the past week or so. Technology stocks took it on the chin. Tesla (TSLA) plummeted. And the Nasdaq sank 10% in just three trading days, putting it in correction territory.

 

Buckle up, investors: Market uncertainty will likely persist in the coming weeks, thanks to the pandemic, economic downturn, and upcoming election.

 

Given the uncertainty in the market, we went looking for stocks that we felt relatively certain about--they're high-quality and we expect them to remain so, we have high confidence in our fair value estimates of these names, and they're undervalued.

 

Specifically we screened for the following:

 

Wide moats: Firms with wide Morningstar Economic Moat Ratings have unmatched advantages that should allow them to fend off their competitors and outearn their costs of capital for the next 20 years. By their very natures, wide-moat companies are reliable in terms of their businesses--think of them as "steady Eddies."

 

Stable or positive moat trends: To qualify, a company needs to be maintaining or growing its competitive advantages, not facing impossible-to-overcome headwinds that may ultimately threaten its moat.

 

Low uncertainty: Such companies enjoy sales predictability, modest operating and financial leverage, and limited exposure to contingent events. As a result of these factors, we can more confidently estimate the future cash flows of these companies and therefore have high confidence in our fair value estimates.

 

Lastly, we focused only on those names trading in 4- and 5-star range, ensuring that there's a significant margin of safety.

 

 

Four stocks made the cut as of this writing. Here's a little bit from our analysts about each business.

 

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