If the goal is to find stocks to buy when prices are lower rather than higher, it stands to reason that the time to go looking for the best stocks to buy is right now.
After all, the market is off by more than a fifth so far this year, which means it's probably safe to assume that most investors are fearful. And if most investors are fearful, well… doesn't Warren Buffett say that this is the time to get at least a little bit greedy?
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Finding quality stocks to buy when seemingly everything is selling off is easier said than done, of course. And if you're looking for help from Wall Street analysts, good luck. There's a saying about analysts: "In a bull market you don't need them; in a bear market you don't want them."
That's far too harsh as an assessment - but understandable as a sentiment. It's well known that Wall Street analysts are reluctant to slap Sell calls on the stocks they cover. There are a number of reasons for this reticence, but that's a discussion for another day.
Perhaps less well known is that analysts are also pretty stingy when it comes to bestowing the highest conviction Buy recommendations on the names they follow.
As of Sept. 22, only five stocks in the S&P 500 carried consensus recommendations of Sell or Strong Sell, according to data from S&P Global Market Intelligence. At the other end of the ratings spectrum, 392 of the index's 500 stocks had consensus recommendations of Buy or Strong Buy.
That's far too many Buy calls, to be sure. We know for a fact that the vast majority of stocks turn out to be duds. Research shows that the entirety of the $75.7 trillion in net global stock market wealth created between 1990 a
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