14 Best Beaten Down Stocks To Buy Right Now

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In this piece, we will take a look at the 14 best beaten down stocks to buy right now. If you want to skip our coverage of the latest events in the stock market, then you can take a look at the 5 Best Beaten Down Stocks To Buy Right Now.

The stock market of 2024 is vastly different from what investors were used to at the onset of the coronavirus pandemic and in its immediate aftermath. Before the pandemic, global stocks and the Chinese economy were performing quite well and there was a growing narrative that perhaps America's days as a global economy might be coming to an end, with up and comers the likes of China all ready to challenge U.S. dominance. Similarly, the stock market was used to low interest rates, and as the coronavirus stimulus packages and the monetary policy of that time showed, there was nowhere but up for stocks to go.

Now, the environment is different. Not only have the major European economies of the U.K. and Germany entered into a recession, but it seems like the American economy still has a lot of juice left when it comes to leading the world. This is because Chinese economic ails simply refuse to go away, and the start of 2024 has also seen billions of dollars flow out of the country's equity markets as the prospects of a robust economic recovery appear to dim down.

However, even though the American economy has been an exception for the last year or so, this doesn't mean that the future is clear. The start of the year saw stock market investors deal with the same set of challenges that they had become accustomed to in 2023. The two key stock market themes in 2024 are interest rates and artificial intelligence, and so far, they've turned out to be bearish and bullish indicators, respectively. While AI stocks such as NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA) have already posted double digit percentage returns year to date, indexes such as the S&P 500 have pared back from their new all time records as inflation continues to be stubborn and the first rate cut dates from the Federal Reserve are still unclear.

On the inflationary side, the latest data set to dent investor hopes for rapid rate cuts is the producer price index (PPI). This data set measures 'inflation out of the gate' i.e., the product prices as they leave factories and make their way to retailers. Naturally, it is a leading inflation indicator and higher PPI readings can hint at higher consumer prices down the road. For January 2024, the PPI rose by 0.9% annually and 0.3% monthly, which ended up overshooting economist estimates. Naturally, the markets weren't impressed, and as the data made rounds, major indexes registered significant drops, led by the tech heavy NASDAQ index that lost 82 basis points.