Stock market experts recommend ASML and ASMI this month

December will be another good month on the stock market, as expected by more than half of the investment experts who participated in the monthly Scholarship Survey by Corné van Zeijl of Actiam. Market experts are once again betting their cards on ASML. According to them, the fair party is over for ArcelorMittal and Just Eat Takeaway.

Experts saw November as sunny. That prediction also came true: The AEX index is up a whopping 8%, after already adding 5% in November.

According to most stock market experts, December will be another good stock month

According to experts, it doesn’t stop there. More than half of the 72 respondents expect the AEX index to rise further in December. Less than 20% expect a decline.

The December vote is as follows:

• 51.4% are optimistic (up from 52.8% last month)
• 29.2% are neutral (versus 25.0% last month)
• 19.4% are pessimistic (up from 22.2% in November)
• Balance: +31.9% (was +30.6%)

Expectations for the next six months are a little more frugal

Expectations for the next six months are less exuberant. Just over a third are optimistic, while 27.8% expect a decline in the AEX index. On balance, the experts have therefore become slightly more grim than last month.

Here are the expectations for the next six months:

• 37.5% are optimistic (up from 43.1% last month)
• 34.7% are neutral (versus 34.7% last month)
• 27.8% are pessimistic (vs. 22.2%)
• Balance: +9.7% (was +20.8%)

Will there be a year-end rally?

It has become a tradition: every year, as the holidays approach, investors wonder if a year-end rally is in sight. That’s what the additional question was about.

Van Zeijl asked the experts to choose from the following four proposals:

• We’ve already had the year-end rally.
• December will show a correction this year
• We get quite a following leaving the bear market behind us
• The year-end rally is an overrated phenomenon.

38% fear the year-end rally is already behind us. A similar percentage (39%) expect good follow-up. Then it can freeze or thaw.

6% expect a market correction in December, while 17% believe the year-end rally has been overstated.

November Stock Issues: Tipped stocks performed well

A permanent part of the Actiam Stock Market Survey is the overview of stock experts’ most and least favorite stocks: the top and bottom-line stocks. How good were participants’ predictions in the previous survey?

The toppers list turned out to be exceptionally well chosen. All four of the top picks showed heels in the AEX index, each with double-digit returns. Prosus in particular proved to be a winning choice, given the price increase of as much as 42%. The average increase in the shopping list share price is therefore impressive: 21.8%.

The list of floppers paints a mixed picture. Just Eat Takeaway (+24%) and ArcelorMittal (+14%) largely outperformed the AEX index. Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield and Adyen did what they had to do: fall behind.

On balance, a long/short dummy fund achieved a return of more than 10%. With this, the experts performed significantly better than the private investors who participated last month National Investor Sentiment Survey of IEX: with them there was a drop of 14%.

Picks for December: ASML preferred, ArcelorMittal party and JET over

Finally, December’s picks Which stocks do stock experts think are good cards and which ones should we avoid?

According to experts, ASML has much more to offer. Our industry colleague ASMI is also very successful. Adyen was still in the broom wagon last month, but that could change now. Unilever and ING complete the December buying list.

For ArcelorMittal and Just Eat Takeaway, the party after last month’s price explosion is over, many investment professionals fear. They end up in flopper row again. According to many, it was enough for Philips too: this share is going from the top to the flop. Randstad is the fourth major fund that experts say we should avoid for a while.

* The balance represents the number of positive responses minus the number of negative responses.