Raymond James’ Best Stock Picks for 2014

Published on January 17, 2014 at 1:56 pm by David Woodburn in Lists, Stock Analysis

Raymond James has been one of the better firms at projecting the winning stocks in a givenyear on the stock market. While no one is 100-percent right, among those who make projections or predictions abut the stocks toby in a year, Raymond James has generally been among the best and most consistent in its assessments in recent years.

With that, when Raymond James is ready to unveil its latest list of top stock picks – this one for the 24 calendar year – many investors tend to pay some attention.

Raymond James Financial, Inc. (NYSE:RJF)

David Henwood, chief investment officer at Raymond James, helped unveil the list on CNBC Friday morning.

“We pick solid names that are marketable, that we think will have dependable performance over an extended period of time,” Henwood said. “These are names that should be good for two or three years, but will outperform on a 12-month basis.”

One of the highlighted stocks on this year’s list was actually the firm’s top performer in 2013 – and yet Raymond James still believes there is value in the stock of Ctrip.com International, Ltd. (ADR) (NASDAQ:CTRP) after a 175-percent jump in its stock price last year. Another key stock that has performed well of late is Comcast Corporation (NASDAQ:CMCSA), which has gone up 34 percent over the last 12 months and is up more than 250 percent in the last five years. Comcast Corporation (NASDAQ:CMCSA) is also on the Raymond James list for 2014.

The most prominent mega-cap stock on the list is Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL), which only rose about 9 percent in value over the last 12 months, but has a growth trajectory of more than 550 percent since January 2009. While Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) stock is around $550 per share now, some analysts have recently placed price targets near or above $800 for the stock over the course of the next year.

Some of the other stocks on Raymond James’ buy list for 2014 are salesforce.com, inc. (NYSE:CRM), Intuit, Inc. (NASDAQ:INTU), Advance Auto Parts, Inc. (NYSE:AAP), Cameron International Corporation (NYSE:CAM), JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE:JPM) and Newell Rubbermaid Inc. (NYSE:NWL).