“Meta Platforms is recommended by just one newsletter, while Tesla isn’t recommended by any.”
Who will be the ultimate winner of the cage fight between Tesla’s Elon Musk and Meta Platforms’ Mark Zuckerberg?
The investment newsletter industry’s bet is “none of the above.”
By “ultimate winner,” I’m not referring to who might win an actual cage fight between these two CEOs. Both men have toyed with the idea of such a fight, though it’s not clear whether one will ever take place. The far more important question for investors is which company’s stock will perform the best in coming months.
The newsletter industry is decidedly unimpressed with both stocks. Neither is anywhere close to the top of a list of those most recommended for purchase by the two-dozen top performing newsletters monitored by my performance auditing firm. Meta Platforms
META,
is recommended by just one newsletter, while Tesla
TSLA,
isn’t recommended by any.
The stocks that these newsletters instead find most attractive, each of which is recommended for purchase by four services, are from decidedly non-high-tech companies. These newsletters are not anti-tech, but their editors are wary of the technology sector’s rich valuations.
This is evident from the table below. Regardless of which valuation measure you focus on, neither Tesla nor Meta comes close to the valuations of the stocks these newsletters find most attractive. Data are from FactSet.
| Average of stocks recommended by 4 newsletters | Average of stocks recommended by 3 newsletters | Tesla | Meta Platforms | |
| Forward P/E | 11.8 | 14.2 | 67.9 | 22.1 |
| Trailing P/E | 11.4 | 14.3 | 75.6 | 28.8 |
| Price/book | 3.0 | 4.5 | 18.5 | 5.9 |
| Forward price/sales | 1.8 | 2.4 | 7.8 | 5.7 |
| Trailing price/sales | 1.6 | 2.5 | 9.8 | 6.3 |
| Dividend Yield | 4.2% | 3.3% | 0.0% | 0.0% |
Listed below are the stocks recommended for purchase by three or more monitored newsletters.
Recommended by four newsletters each:
| 3M Co (MMM) |
| FedEx Corp (FDX) |
| Pfizer Inc (PFE) |
Recommended by three newsletters each:
| Air Prods & Chems Inc (APD) |
| Apple Inc (AAPL) |
| Bank Amer Corp (BAC) |
| Comcast Corp New (CMCSA) |
| CVS Health Corp (CVS) |
| Disney Walt Co (DIS) |
| Fifth Third Bancorp (FITB) |
| International Paper Co (IP) |
| JPMorgan Chase & Co (JPM) |
| Leggett & Platt Inc (LEG) |
| M D C Hldgs Inc (MDC) |
| Medtronic Plc (MDT) |
| Morgan Stanley (MS) |
| Old Natl Bancorp Ind (ONB) |
| PNC Finl Svcs Group Inc (PNC) |
| Schwab Charles Corp New (SCHW) |
| Snap On Inc (SNA) |
| Tyson Foods Inc (TSN) |
Mark Hulbert is a regular contributor to MarketWatch. His Hulbert Ratings tracks investment newsletters that pay a flat fee to be audited. He can be reached at [email protected]
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