MAGA might mean “Make America Great Again” to Trump supporters.
But for the stock market, MAGA means something else: Microsoft, Amazon, Google-parent Alphabet and Apple, which together are worth $4 trillion, more than the combined value of half of the entire S&P 500 roster of companies.
And all four have been on fire this year.
But there can be only one true king among kings, so which one is the best to own?
Per CNBC:
“Amazon to me is really the best of the four, ” Newton Advisors’ Mark Newton said Thursday on CNBC’s “Trading Nation.” “It’s had a huge trajectory over the last 10 years, (it) has done a lot better than some of these other stocks, and still maintains, you know, very attractive technicals.”
Amazon stock was up 1.8% to 1,935 about two hours before the closing bell on Friday after a Thursday’s quarterly earnings exceeded expectations by a big margin, posting 17% revenue growth for the quarter.
The company also predicted a 13% to 20% increase in second-quarter sales. AMZN shares saw a sharp decline — like most other stocks — during the fourth quarter of 2018, and it’s still short of its September 2018 high of $2,050 a share, meaning there’s plenty more room to grow.
“I think it does get back to former highs. It might stall out briefly, but it would be one of the four that I still like. And you know I think the group still does fine in the weeks and months to come,” he added.
Strategic Wealth Partners’ Mark Tepper agrees that Amazon looks good on a fundamental basis. He believes the valuation is compelling, and that growth from higher margin businesses will continue to drive the stock higher.
“All four great companies,” he said of the MAGA basket of stocks, “but the one that’s most attractive to me is Amazon. …They haven’t seen that recent run up in price that the other stocks have. And it’s quite simply way undervalued.”
Amazon currently trades at 143 times forward earnings, making it more expensive than Microsoft, Alphabet and Apple, which trade at 114, 56 and 85 times forward earnings, respectively.
Tepper likes the Seattle-based company’s diversified revenue streams — especially the growth of its AWS cloud services business.
“We love the three pillars of their business. Obviously you have retail, cloud, and advertising … and Amazon has AWS. They are the dominant player. They’re number 1 in the cloud space. They have been growing that business at over 40% annually. And then we shift over to their other high margin business which is the ad business. They’re swiping ad dollars from Google and Facebook, ” he said.
With growth and momentum behind Amazon, Tepper believes it will soon take out the $2,250 level.
The stock has gained about 27% this year, and was trading around $1,912 on Thursday.
Another of the MAGA trade, Microsoft, soared to a new all-time high on Thursday — topping the $1 trillion mark — after the company beat top and bottom line estimates, helped by cloud revenue and software subscription growth.
But Newton believes the stock’s record rally may have gotten ahead of itself. He thinks there could still be some opportunity in the near term, but that the stock looks overbought and has gotten “very stretched.” He prefers Amazon since it’s still trading below it’s all-time high.
Full disclosure: JT Crowe owned U.S.-traded shares of both Amazon and Microsoft upon publication of this article.