S&P 500 Stocks With the Most Upside

Wall Street analysts forecast these names to deliver the biggest price gains in the S&P 500 over the next 12 months.

Dan Burrows's avatar
By
published
in News
stocks to buy
(Image credit: Getty Images)

Wall Street's top strategists collectively forecast another year of gains for the S&P 500, albeit a much more muted one. That's to be expected after the benchmark index gained more than fifth on a price basis in 2023.

Wall Street's average target on the index gives the S&P 500 implied upside of about 5% from current levels. At the high end, Capital Economics forecasts the benchmark index to hit 5,500 by the end of 2024, giving the S&P 500 implied price upside of about 15% next year. At the low end, JPMorgan Chase expects the index to retreat 12% to 4,200 in 2024. 

Passive investors will go along for the ride no matter where it takes them. Stock pickers, on the other hand, seek to beat their benchmarks, and that's where Wall Street's S&P 500 stocks with the most upside come in. 

From just $107.88 $24.99 for Kiplinger Personal Finance

Become a smarter, better informed investor. Subscribe from just $107.88 $24.99, plus get up to 4 Special Issues

CLICK FOR FREE ISSUE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/y99mlvgqmn1763972420.png

Sign up for Kiplinger’s Free Newsletters

Profit and prosper with the best of expert advice on investing, taxes, retirement, personal finance and more - straight to your e-mail.

Profit and prosper with the best of expert advice - straight to your e-mail.

Sign up

Analysts base their Buy, Hold or Sell recommendations on how they expect a stock to perform relative to the S&P 500 over the next 12 months or so. To do so, they plug numbers into discounted cash flow models. These models spit out price targets, which tell them where the stock should be trading in a year. The difference between the stock's current price and its target is called its implied, or potential, upside. Analysts' average price targets tell you how the Street collectively expects a stock to perform.

While you can hardly base a stock-picking strategy on the sole criterion of price targets, it can be helpful to know which S&P 500 stocks are expected to deliver the biggest returns in the year ahead. To that end, we used S&P Global Market Intelligence to screen the S&P 500 for the index members with the highest implied upside for 2024 and beyond. 

Have a look at the table below to see the 10 S&P 500 stocks analysts expect to put up the biggest price gains in 2024. (Price targets and other data are as of December 22.)

Swipe to scroll horizontally
S&P 500 stocks with the highest implied upside
CompanyTickerImplied price upside over next 12 months
ModernaMRNA58%
Warner Bros. DiscoveryWBD45%
Bio-Rad LaboratoriesBIO43%
First SolarFSLR39%
United Airlines HoldingsUAL36%
General MotorsGM36%
HalliburtonHAL35%
APA Corp.APA34%
AptivAPTV34%
Las Vegas SandsLVS33%

Related Content

Dan Burrows
Dan Burrows
Senior Investing Writer, Kiplinger.com

Dan Burrows is Kiplinger's senior investing writer, having joined the publication full time in 2016.

A long-time financial journalist, Dan is a veteran of MarketWatch, CBS MoneyWatch, SmartMoney, InvestorPlace, DailyFinance and other tier 1 national publications. He has written for The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg and Consumer Reports and his stories have appeared in the New York Daily News, the San Jose Mercury News and Investor's Business Daily, among many other outlets. As a senior writer at AOL's DailyFinance, Dan reported market news from the floor of the New York Stock Exchange.

Once upon a time – before his days as a financial reporter and assistant financial editor at legendary fashion trade paper Women's Wear Daily – Dan worked for Spy magazine, scribbled away at Time Inc. and contributed to Maxim magazine back when lad mags were a thing. He's also written for Esquire magazine's Dubious Achievements Awards.

In his current role at Kiplinger, Dan writes about markets and macroeconomics.

Dan holds a bachelor's degree from Oberlin College and a master's degree from Columbia University.

Disclosure: Dan does not trade individual stocks or securities. He is eternally long the U.S equity market, primarily through tax-advantaged accounts.

Latest