We recently published a list of the 10 Cheap Rising Stocks to Buy Right Now. In this article, we will look at where Barclays PLC (NYSE:BCS) stands against other cheap rising stocks in which to invest.

On May 2, US stocks notched their longest winning streak since 2004 as the United States and China signaled a willingness to have trade talks. The broad market index rose 1.47%, which helped it erase the losses since the Trump administration announced reciprocal tariffs on April 2.

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Trump told Time magazine on April 22 that his administration was engaged with China on striking a tariff deal. The US president also said he expects announcements on many other trade deals to be made over the next three to four weeks.

During an interview with NBC on May 2, the US President stated that tariffs on Chinese imports will eventually be lowered:

At some point, I’m going to lower them because otherwise, you could never do business with them. They want to do business very much … their economy is collapsing.”

Jay Hatfield, founder and chief investment officer of InfraCap, believes the worst of the uncertainty around tariffs is over. He shared the following remarks while talking to CNBC:

“The confusion about whether there’s really talks going on with China or not took some steam out of the market. Our view is that we’ve reached peak tariff tantrum and so it’s likely to be more positive than negative.”

A spokesperson for China’s Commerce Ministry has said the country is currently assessing proposals shared by Washington to begin trade negotiations. Analysts view the statement as a subtle shift in tone from Beijing that could potentially open the door for talks on tariffs.

The stock market has also received a boost from the latest jobs data shared by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The American economy added 177,000 new jobs in April. While this was slightly down from 185,000 jobs in March, the gain was still stronger than the average pace of monthly job growth in the last three months, which reflected the resilience of the US job market.

Our Methodology

For this article, we sifted through screeners to identify stocks with returns of 10% or more over the past 30 days, a forward P/E ratio of less than 15, a trailing P/E ratio of less than 15, and a P/B ratio of under 1. From there, we picked the 10 stocks with the lowest forward P/E ratio and ranked them in descending order. All data is as of the close of business on May 5, 2025.

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).

Barclays PLC (NYSE:BCS)

30-day returns: 24.37%

Forward P/E ratio: 7.26

Barclays PLC (NYSE:BCS) is a diversified bank with five divisions: Barclays UK, Barclays UK Corporate Bank, Barclays Private Bank and Wealth Management, Barclays Investment Bank, and Barclays US Consumer Bank.

In April this year, the company announced a strategic partnership with Brookfield Asset Management Ltd. to transform and expand Barclays PLC (NYSE:BCS)’s payment acceptance business. Under the agreement, the two firms will work together to create a standalone entity. Barclays plans on investing around £400 million in the business, mainly during the first three years of the partnership.

Barclays PLC (NYSE:BCS) reported a beat on profit for the first quarter of fiscal 2025. It posted a pre-tax profit of £2.7 billion and income of £7.7 billion, both coming above analysts’ expectations. The results were driven by strong investment bank performance, whose income increased by 16% year-over-year. The company generated a return on tangible equity of 14%.

While talking to CNBC on April 30, CEO C.S. Venkatakrishnan said that he expects high market volatility moving forward due to ongoing trade tensions. However, he also sees this as an opportunity to profitably help clients manage their risks in uncertain times.

“It’s calmer now but I imagine it will continue to go up and down. Beyond that, as you’ve seen in our results, that market volatility helps us help clients manage their risk, we can do so in a profitable way that helps them as well and helps markets income, as long as you manage your risk well.”

With returns of over 24% over the past month and a low forward P/E ratio, Barclays PLC (NYSE:BCS) is among the cheap rising stocks to buy right now.

Overall, BCS ranks 7th among the 10 Cheap Rising Stocks to Buy Right Now. While we acknowledge the potential of BCS as an investment, our conviction lies in the belief that 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 BCS but that trades at less than 5 times its earnings, check out our report about this cheapest AI stock.

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Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.