5 Best American Stocks To Buy in 2022

4. Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL)

Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 134

One of the few stocks that can be called pandemic winners, Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) is an American multinational technology company that specializes in consumer electronics, software, and online services. Despite some concerns regarding supply constraints, many analysts, including Morgan Stanley’s Katy Huberty, believe that Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) should be able to achieve sustained gross margins upwards of 42%, due to its gradual supply improvements and structurally lower depreciation and amortization (D&A) improvements.

Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) released its better-than-expected earnings report for the fiscal second quarter of 2022 on April 28. The company reported an EPS of $1.52, beating market estimates by $0.09. The tech giant also generated quarterly revenues that amounted to $97.28 billion, an increase of 8.59% on a year-over-year basis, surpassing the market consensus by $3.29 billion.

The investor sentiment for the stock has largely been positive, making Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) one of the best American stocks out there. At the end of the fourth quarter of 2021, 134 hedge funds in the database of Insider Monkey held stakes worth $186 billion in Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL), up from 120 in the previous quarter worth $146 billion. Of these, Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway held the largest stake in the company, with a position worth $157.5 billion.

Evercore ISI analyst Amit Daryanani believes Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) to be well-positioned to sustain mid-single digit sales and low double-digit EPS growth for “multiple years. With that in mind, he kept an Outperform rating and a $210 price target on the shares of the company.

ClearBridge Investments, an investment management firm, mentioned Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) in its fourth-quarter 2021 investor letter. Here is what the firm said:

“Despite these mixed emerging growth results, the ClearBridge Global Growth Strategy outperformed the benchmark due to resilience among our secular and structural growth holdings. The bulk of these contributions came from U.S. mega-cap growth stocks Apple and Microsoft which continued to uniquely act both offensively and defensively as they have through most of the pandemic.”