MW 15 stocks to put on your list to buy when the market recovers

By Mark Hulbert

These stocks are good bets to outperform, because they're sensitive to changes in market liquidity

Stocks most sensitive to changes in liquidity outperform the least sensitive stocks by 7.5% annually, on average.

The stock market's weakness might not be over - but it's not too early to start building a list of stocks to consider buying when investors are willing to take on more risk.

A good place to look are stocks that are most sensitive to changes in the market's overall liquidity - that is, how easy it is to buy or sell stocks without impacting prices. Researchers have found that liquidity-sensitive stocks tend to suffer the most when the markets fall, but outperform when liquidity returns.

This relationship between liquidity sensitivity and performance is the focus of a 2003 study titled "Liquidity Risk and Expected Stock Returns." The researchers reported that the stocks most sensitive to changes in liquidity outperform the least sensitive stocks by 7.5% annually, on average.

The source of such stocks' outperformance, according to the professors, is the extra return that investors need in order to compensate for the risk of receiving a bad price when trying to sell during a so-called liquidity event - when marketwide liquidity dries up.

I've written about such stocks before, most recently in August 2024. Since then, the 15 stocks listed in that column's table have outperformed the broad U.S. market by 8.8 annualized percentage points - 25% annualized, versus 16.2% for the S&P 500 SPX.

Prior to my August 2024 column, I wrote about such stocks in late March 2020. The 10 stocks listed in that column have since beaten the S&P 500 by 6.7 annualized percentage points - 27.4% annualized, versus 20%. Both margins of outperformance are remarkably similar to the longer-term average reported in that 2003 research paper.

Building off these prior successes, here is an updated table of stocks most sensitive to changes in the market's liquidity - and therefore likely to outperform the S&P 500 during the bull market's next major leg up.

To build the table below, I applied the research paper's methodology to stocks in the Russell 3000 index RUA, further narrowing the list to those also recommended by at least two of the investment newsletters that are monitored by my performance-auditing firm. They are listed in descending order of liquidity sensitivity.

   Ticker  Stock 
   NVDA    Nvidia 
   BMY     Bristol Myers Squibb 
   KNSL    Kinsale Capital Group 
   ADBE    Adobe 
   MS      Morgan Stanley 
   CVS     CVS Health 
   USB     U.S. Bancorp 
   BK      Bank of New York Mellon 
   CMCSA   Comcast 
   AMGN    Amgen 
   SPG     Simon Property Group 
   SCHW    Charles Schwab 
   TFC     Truist Financial 
   SWKS    Skyworks Solutions 
   TGT     Target 

Mark Hulbert is a regular contributor to MarketWatch. His Hulbert Ratings tracks investment newsletters that pay a flat fee to be audited. He can be reached at mark@hulbertratings.com

More: April typically showers stock investors with gains - but this year is no sure bet

Also read: Corporate insiders' stock-market moves don't match the headlines. Here's what they're seeing.

-Mark Hulbert

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April 11, 2026 13:17 ET (17:17 GMT)

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