In this article, we will take a look at the 11 Best Stocks You’ll Wish You Bought Sooner.
Discussions on best investment opportunities remain in the spotlight even as the macroeconomic signals point to looming uncertainty and shifts in the capital allocation strategies. On March 25, 2026, in one of its articles, CNBC reported that the probabilities of a recession, estimated by major institutions, are going up. Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, warned that recession is to be perceived as a real threat, with the firm’s estimation placing the probability of a downturn within the next 12 months at 48.6%. Meanwhile, Goldman Sachs and Wilmington Trust projects elevated risks of 30% and 45%, respectively.
Various factors contribute to this increase in probability, including the ongoing Iran conflict, alongside a labor market that has shown limited breadth outside healthcare hiring. The Fed Chair, Jerome Powell, stated that stagflation comparisons to the 1970s remain overstated and policymakers are trying to balance the inflation pressures with slowing employment growth.
Investment opportunities exist even in the midst of such troublesome market conditions. But they have to be availed before their price goes up. The legendary billionaire investor and philanthropist Warren Buffett has elegantly quoted this:
Opportunities come infrequently. When it rains gold, put out the bucket, not the thimble.
Against this backdrop, we have put together a list of 11 best stocks that will benefit your portfolio sooner rather than later.
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Our Methodology
To put together our list of 11 best stocks you’ll wish you bought sooner, we screened for stocks with a market cap of more than $2 billion and an average return on equity of more than 20% over the past 5 years. We narrowed our list further to companies with a 3-year performance of more than 50% and a price target of 20% or more. We then selected the 11 best stocks based on the number of hedge funds having a stake in each and ranked them in ascending order. We limited our final selection to companies that have recently reported noteworthy developments likely to impact investor sentiment. All the pricing data are as of market close on March 29, 2026.
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 498.7% since May 2014, beating its benchmark by 303 percentage points (see more details here).
11. Leidos Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:LDOS)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 37
Leidos Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:LDOS) is one of the 11 best stocks you’ll wish you bought sooner.
On March 2, 2026, Leidos Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:LDOS) raised approximately $1.387 billion through an unsecured offering of senior notes maturing in 2029 and 2036. The company aims to use the proceeds to fund the acquisition of KENE Parent, Inc., the parent company of Entrust. The notes were managed under a 2020 indenture with Citibank. To safeguard the interests of bondholders and highlight its acquisition-based growth strategy, the notes include a special mandatory redemption clause at 101% of principal if the transaction is not finalized by mid-August 2026. While the debt issuance is not strictly contingent on the deal’s closure, Leidos maintains strategic flexibility to utilize the proceeds for general corporate purposes, potentially impacting its long-term leverage profile and acquisition-driven growth strategy.
In another development, on March 11, 2026, Leidos Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:LDOS) announced that it had secured a $454.9 million contract to modernize the U.S. Air Force’s Cloud One platform. The company partners with major cloud providers such as Amazon (AMZN) and Google to improve security and automation. This initiative supports the NorthStar 2030 strategy and assists in speeding up the mission-critical cloud adoption across the military.
Founded in 1969, Leidos Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:LDOS) is a Fortune 500 science and technology company with a focus on serving defense, intelligence, civil, and health markets. Based in Virginia, the company offers mission-critical solutions in cybersecurity, data analytics, and systems engineering.
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