Highlights From Most Popular Stocks Among Financial Advisors

The Fed is widely expected to raise the key interest on Wednesday and traders await this decision, which should remove the uncertainty on the stock market and set its future course. Even though the Fed is most likely to increase the rates gradually, it will still affect some companies that have been relying on cheap money. Nevertheless, when it comes to financial advisors, they are mostly focusing on companies that have strong fundamentals and are most likely to continue to deliver solid performance in a higher interest rate environment. With this in mind, let’s take a closer look at some of the most searched stocks among financial advisors last week. The stocks are based on the data compiled by TrackStar, the official newsletter of Intuition, which is a division of InvestingChannel.

We are going to take a look at the stocks that registered a significant jump in TrackStar’s list and represent new entrants to the top 20 list. In addition, we are going to assess the relevant smart money sentiment towards these stocks. At Insider Monkey, we track around 730 of the best-skilled hedge funds and other investors as part of our small-cap strategy, which has returned 102% in the last three years (see more details here). Analyzing 13F filings of the investors from our database allows us to see, which stocks they collectively are bullish on.

Similar to the last couple of weeks, Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) remained the most searched stock among financial advisors. Last week it was announced that Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) plans to abandon its Apple TV live Internet-based television service. The stock did not react to the news, since Apple’s performance is mostly correlated to its iPhone sales and analysts expect iPhone sales to continue to deliver strong results next year. As stated earlier, Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) is one of the top stocks among the funds we follow, with 133 investors holding shares of the company, including billionaires Carl Icahn, David Einhorn and Ken Fisher, among others.

On the other hand, JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE:JPM)‘s stock jumped in the ranking to the 13th spot from 54th a week earlier. The bank most likely got into the spotlights amid the Fed’s decision to raise the key interest rate, which will benefit the banking sector through helping them increase revenues. Another major bank that climbed several positions in the ranking is Citigroup Inc (NYSE:C), which closed last week on the 17th spot, versus 84th the previous week. Among the investors we follow, both JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE:JPM) and Citigroup Inc (NYSE:C) are popular stocks. Citigroup was the fifth most popular stock among the funds we track at the end of September, with 121 funds reporting long positions in the company that were equal to 6.90% of the company’s outstanding stock. In JPMorgan, a total of 100 funds from our database reported stakes, amassing 3.40% of the company’s stock.