Oppenheimer said this year’s market winners should continue to outperform through December. Stock prices got off to a shaky start to the month, with the S&P 500, Nasdaq Composite and Dow Jones Industrial Average all falling on Monday. Strong stocks such as Super Micro Computer and Broadcom all fell nearly 3% in intraday trading. But Ari Wald, head of technical analysis at Oppenheimer & Co., said in a note last week that December is the best-performing month of the year for momentum factors since 1928. He said the momentum factor tracks the performance of market leaders versus laggards over the past 12 months. “December’s outperformance suggests that investors are often looking to sell losing stocks to offset their capital gains tax liability,” Wald wrote. The end of the year is typically the time when investors try to reduce their taxes by selling underperforming stocks to realize capital losses and offset capital gains. In addition, seasonal trends will also be a tailwind for the overall market, Wald said. “We find that when the index starts the month above its 200-day average, as it currently does, the S&P 500 returns higher in December,” he said. These are some of Oppenheimer’s most important ideas and are also positively evaluated in trends and momentum studies. Everyone has an Overweight rating on the company, and the stock is trading above its 200-day average. Nvidia, which makes graphics processing units used in artificial intelligence models, is considered one of the biggest beneficiaries of the AI boom. It soared this year, but fell nearly 13% in November as investors became concerned about tech companies’ valuations. Nvidia had a loss-making month even though its third-quarter profit exceeded . On Monday, Nvidia announced it had acquired a $2 billion stake in Synopsys as part of a multi-year partnership aimed at accelerating computing and AI engineering solutions. According to FactSet, NVDA YTD Mountain Nvidia stock has an average analyst rating of “buy” year-to-date, with an upside of 43% from the average price target. The stock is up 33% since the beginning of the year. Meanwhile, Lam Research’s stock price has more than doubled this year. When the company, which supplies semiconductor manufacturing equipment, announced its first quarter results in October, profits and sales exceeded expectations. LRCX YTD Mountain Year-to-date, Lam Research has an average rating of Overweight and an upside of 5.8% to its average price target, according to FactSet.
