We recently published a list of 10 Stocks Wall Street is Talking About These Days. In this article, we are going to take a look at where Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) stands against other stocks Wall Street is talking about these days.
Gene Muster from Deepwater Asset Management said in a recent interview with CNBC that investors should take a “targeted” approach while investing in major tech companies and look for “pockets” of opportunities.
“I think that when you answer the question more holistically, there’s still—if you look at, uh, we looked at 20 different companies, tech companies, and their reporting season and graded each of them—and of the six Mag Seven, five of the six we gave an A grade, and so there’s still this outperformance that you’re seeing with the fundamentals on these companies, but that doesn’t mean that the best opportunities to invest is necessarily with them, and so again, more of a targeted approach.”
Munster also talked about some major tech companies and said he believes Jensen Huang’s AI chip giant is still “cheap” when it comes to its stock price. However, the analyst advised investors to look for smaller companies:
“You have to be uh strategic in terms of what you’re buying. If you wanted to buy a basket, I would buy a basket of smaller tech companies, sub 500 billion dollars, and focus on those. It’s probably where your bigger outperformance is.”
For this article, we picked 10 stocks currently making moves on Wall Street. With each stock, we have mentioned the number of hedge fund investors. 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 373.4% since May 2014, beating its benchmark by 218 percentage points (see more details here).
READ ALSO: 7 Best Stocks to Buy For Long-Term and 8 Cheap Jim Cramer Stocks to Invest In
Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL)
Number of Hedge Fund Investors: 158
Craig Moffett, MoffettNathanson Founder, said in a latest program on CNBC that moving iPhone production to India would not solve Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) problems.
“You have a tremendous sort of menu of problems created by tariffs, and moving to India doesn’t solve all the problems. Now, granted, it helps to some degree. By the way, I would sort of question how that’s going to work. If the glass and all the materials for the entire phone is manufactured in China and yet it’s assembled in India, it’s not entirely clear the extent to which that will avoid Chinese tariffs.”
The analyst also talked about Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) struggles in China and declining iPhone sales amid competition:
“During the first quarter, we’ve seen declines or we expect we’ll see declines of something like 8% in China. But that’s against a backdrop of some pretty significant handset subsidies, and the volumes are really going to the Huawei’s and the Vivos and the local competitors in China rather than to Apple. Some of that is because of the price point. The subsidies were aimed at lower-tier phones. But some of it is that kind of nationalism that is—it’s viewed as patriotic in China to buy a Chinese-made phone.”
Apple investors are cheering the US-China tariff deal. However, the core threats haunting the company have not changed.
Apple Inc (NASDAQ:AAPL) is desperately in need of new catalysts. The company’s revenue in China fell 8% in fiscal year 2024, following a 2% decline the previous year. The Chinese market accounts for about 15% of Apple’s total revenue, so this downtrend cannot be ignored.
Investors had hopes from the Wearables, Home, and Accessories segment, but so far, its performance has been weak. Vision Pro faces tough competition from Meta’s $500 Quest and the more affordable Quest 3S, making it hard to justify its $3,500 price tag. The failure of Apple’s HomePod, unable to compete with Amazon’s and Google’s lower-priced offerings, further highlights the challenges in this market.
Apple’s iPhone 16 has not shown promising growth prospects yet, and investors are still in a wait-and-see mode on the AI platform.
Columbia Seligman Global Technology Fund stated the following regarding Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) in its Q4 2024 investor letter:
“The fund maintained a position in Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) throughout the quarter through the release of the company’s new iPhone 16 in September. Company leaders were excited about the release of the new model, as this is the first model that will feature enhanced AI capabilities through the Apple Intelligence features. Sales for the first few weeks in October and November trailed behind year over year sales from the iPhone 15, as availability of Apple Intelligence was not compatible with all iPhone models. Apple announced a partnership with OpenAI that has allowed the integration of ChatGPT into the Apple ecosystem, separate from the core Apple Intelligence features. This partnership highlights continued progress from Apple to introduce AI capabilities into its products and we expect the iPhone 17 to have even more expansive AI capabilities, increasing potential demand for the new model that is on track to be released in 2025.”
Overall, AAPL ranks 5th on our list of stocks Wall Street is talking about these days. While we acknowledge the potential of AAPL our conviction lies in the belief that under the radar AI stocks hold greater promise for delivering higher returns, and doing so within a shorter time frame. There is an AI stock that went up since the beginning of 2025, while popular AI stocks lost around 25%. If you are looking for an AI stock that is more promising than AAPL but that trades at less than 5 times its earnings, check out our report about this cheapest AI stock.
READ NEXT: 20 Best AI Stocks To Buy Now and 30 Best Stocks to Buy Now According to Billionaires.
Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.
