3 Stocks Wall Street is Betting Heavy on in 2026!

The S&P 500 is wrapping up an incredible 2025, up nearly 17%. And in the midst of this run-up, Wall Street banks are releasing their 2026 S&P 500 year-end price targets. And as of right now, not a single investment bank expects the S&P 500 to be lower at the end of 2026. Every single one of them is bullish. And I was personally curious to know what stocks they were the most bullish on. So I ran a stock screen to find out exactly which stocks had the most upside according to the average analyst's estimate. And today, we're gonna be looking at three of them. I also wanna say thank you to Seeking Alpha for sponsoring this video. This has been the software I've been using for the longest throughout my investing career. On January 6th at 12 p.m. Eastern time, they're gonna be releasing their top stocks for 2026. Their picks from 2023, 24, and 2025 actually all outperformed the S&P 500, which is pretty remarkable to think about. This is an event I'll be attending. I'll leave a link in the description so you can sign up for this if you're interested as well. If you're not already a member of Seeking Alpha, then just use the link in the description for the seven-day free trial so that you can get access to this event. Now, let's dive into three stocks that have substantial upside according to the average analyst's estimate. And the first stock on this list is none other than Meta. Meta has been on an insane ride during 2025. At one point, they were trading close to $800 a share, and then they saw a huge sell-off at the end of October. The stock fell all the way down to around $589 a share. And as of right now, it's sitting near the middle of its 52-week range, around $666 per share. Now, what's interesting is the average analyst is giving them over 24% upside as we head into 2026. So why is that the case? Well, to start, we have to understand that people compare Meta to the MAG7 stocks. And as of right now, Meta is the cheapest of the MAG7 companies. The forward PE multiple is sitting at about 26.18. Now, when we look at Meta's fundamentals, if we look at them on the profitability sheet, what we can see is EPS has compounded at just a ridiculous rate over the past decade. 2014 earnings at $1.12, and 2024, $24.61. So we're talking about explosive growth, and this is primarily driven by top-line growth, of course. Revenue at the end of 2024 was about $164.5 billion. Now, one of the things you will notice is there is a drop in 2022 in EPS, and you could argue this was due to a few different reasons, but we have to understand the business model for Meta to understand why this happened. Meta's business model is very straightforward. 99% of all revenue comes from advertising across Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger. So all in all, this is absolutely an advertising business. And this model has worked very well for Meta over the past decade, but we do have to keep in mind, when we enter recessions, and a lot of people don't realize this, during 2022, we technically entered a recession due to two consecutive quarters of GDP decline. But when that happens, marketing is typically one of the first thing that gets cut, so Meta is directly impacted by this. When the economy's doing poorly, people cut back on advertising spending, and Meta was absolutely hit by this. But if we look at how they've done in their recent quarterly earnings report, it's actually quite impressive. To start, we can see their family daily active people was 3.54 billion on average for September in 2025, which was an increase of 8% year over year. But on top of this, ad impressions delivered across their family of apps increased 14% year over year. And on top of that, the average price per ad increased by 10% year over year. From an advertising perspective, things were going very, very well for Meta. So what's the concern as it relates to Meta? Why did we see a sell-off? Well, the huge concern with Meta and really any of the AI tech giants in general is capital expenditures. It's increased CapEx spending. Let's look at an example. If we jump back over to our quarterly data sheet, let's say that we wanna look at Meta, and then let's say that we wanna look at CapEx to revenue. I'll just plug that in. The data will load in thanks to ticker data, and here's what we can see. Historically speaking, Meta has been a very capital-like business. CapEx to revenue has been around that 10 to maybe 15% range, but we've seen this ramp up substantially in the last few quarters. And in fact, in Q3 of 2025, CapEx to revenue was up to 36.75%. So this historically capital-like business is becoming more capital-intensive. Why is that the case? It's because they're competing in the expensive AI race. This could absolutely pay off in the long run, but investors still have a sour taste in their mouth from when Meta burned 73 billion on the Metaverse. That was CapEx spending that essentially had zero return. So really we've seen a shift in Meta's capital allocation priorities over the last few years, so much so that they've even elected to start paying out a dividend. Now, obviously that starting yield is extremely low, but if they grow the dividend at the same rate that free cash flow has been growing and will continue to grow, then we'll obviously see substantial dividend growth. Now, the question is how much upside is there with Meta at their current prices, trading in the mid-range of their 52-week low, year-to-date currently up about 13.75%. Well, what we can see when we look at Meta, let's plug it into the sensitivity analysis. As of right now, they're actually trading slightly below their average historic P.E. multiple. So there's absolutely the potential for multiple expansion, especially if they can achieve the average EPS CAGR estimate from analysts, which is currently sitting at about 16.19%. So let's assume that they achieve that 16% earnings growth just to see what the results would be, and then assume that the P.E. multiple really doesn't change much whatsoever. It goes to about 29.5, which is in between where it is now and the average P.E. multiple. So very little multiple expansion. All of a sudden, you can see by the years 2029 and 2030, compounded returns look very attractive with the 2030 compounded annual return sitting at about 13.5% without accounting for dividends and a total return of about 113%. So based purely off the numbers and the story behind the company, it's easy to see why analysts see upside with this stock right now. The second stock where Wall Street analysts see substantial upside is Intuit. And this is an interesting pick because sentiment around the stock has changed substantially. It's been up and down over the last few years. And if we just look at the stock year to date, it's only up by about 6.6%. So it's certainly underperformed the broader market. But despite this, we can see the average analyst estimate is currently giving them around 24% upside from their current share price. So what's the story behind this stock? Well, let's make sure we have a basic understanding of the company. You've probably heard of their tools like TurboTax, Credit Karma, MailChimp, and QuickBooks. So essentially this is a software company and the company has built out an excellent software ecosystem. The company has embedded itself into the financial lives of individuals, small businesses, accountants, freelancers, and growing enterprises. So once you're plugged into their ecosystem, it's pretty rare that you leave. And so as a result of this growing ecosystem, their fundamentals have grown substantially over the last decade, as you might suspect. What we can see are some absolutely beautiful charts. Revenue per share has gone from 1,492 to in 2025, 67.25. And the same is true with earnings, substantial growth, and the same is true with free cash flow per share. But what's important is to look at the stability and the predictability of these cash flows. Why is that the case? Well, again, this is a software company, meaning they have substantial recurring revenue. It's a very sticky business. Again, once you join the ecosystem, it's rare that you leave. So this makes future growth very predictable and very stable. And as a result, this is the type of company that typically trades at a premium. And we can see that is the case. Their forward PE multiple is currently sitting at about 29.06. Now, on the flip side, the bare case for any software stock right now is that AI is going to completely change the game. And for some software companies, that will absolutely be the case. But the argument that Wall Street is making and the argument that Intuit makes in their investor presentation is different. They see AI as a massive opportunity. Right now, Intuit's total addressable market is about 300 billion, and they only have about 6% penetration. So they have a massive opportunity. And their claims actually make a lot of sense. Right now, we have over digitization and AI everywhere. And what this is doing is it's creating very low barriers to entry for freelancers to start creating new businesses. And as a result, they're typically gonna use their products, whether it be something like TurboTax or QuickBooks. I'm personally a user of QuickBooks. So what do forward-looking returns actually look like according to Wall Street analysts? Well, again, let's find out. Now, when we look at Intuit, one of the things we'll notice is, again, they've historically traded at quite a premium. In fact, the trailing 12-months PE multiple is now about 45, which is about 10% lower than the historic average for this company. But on top of this, growth rate projections are quite high. Now, over the next year, it's relatively high, and that's for a few different reasons. And one of those reasons is they have completed some acquisitions. But if we just assume that by 2029, EPS gets to about $34.46, that put their projected EPS growth rate close to around 14%. Now, obviously, the threat here is valuation. A stock that's trading at that high of a PE multiple, if it doesn't meet earnings expectations, will likely see a huge reversion of their PE multiple. So if we go ahead and plug in a PE multiple substantially lower than where they're currently sitting, maybe at 30, you can still see pretty attractive results with double-digit returns when you look at a compounded annual return basis from 2028 through 2031. And again, on top of this, keep in mind that this has been an incredible dividend growth stock. We can see the yield is low at about 0.7%, with the 10-year dividend category sitting at 13.71%, and a very beautiful history of growing dividends at a very nice rate. So an interesting pick from Wall Street. They claim their substantial upside, and there's no doubt that the historical fundamentals of the company look quite beautiful. It'll be interesting to see if their AI thesis with this stock actually plays out. And the last stock we'll be looking at is one you were not expecting to be on this list. It does not get a lot of traditional media coverage, but that's AT&T. The stock is only up year-to-date by about 9%, but analysts are actually giving it over 20% upside as we head into 2026. So why are analysts so bullish on this stock? Well, to start, we kind of have to understand the past few years for AT&T. What's been the backstory? Well, this was actually a stock that was loved by a lot of dividend investors. It was a high-yielding stock, and everyone seemed to love it. But if you're paying close attention to the trends, you saw that free cash flow was declining, and meanwhile, the dividend payments continued to increase, and thus, we saw a dividend reduction. And it was a substantial one. They cut it almost by about 50%, going from about $2.08 to now about $1.11. But despite this, because of the sell-off, the stock is still yielding around 4.47% at its current prices. And what we can now see is they're using much less free cash flow to actually pay out their dividends. So from a capital allocation perspective, the company is in a much, much healthier position. There is no doubt about that. Now, if we look at what's been going on with earnings for this company, what we can see is 2023 EPS was about $1.97. 2024, around $1.49. But if we look at what analysts are estimating, at least according to Seeking Alpha, December of 2025 EPS estimate is about $2.06. So again, to compare that to where they've previously been, it looks like they're getting back to growing. EPS will be above where it was in 2024, 2023, and obviously 2022. But 2021, it was still sitting at about $2.77. So they're trending back in the right direction. So the turnaround and the recovery is starting to take place. If we look at revenue per share, it's a little bit misleading because keep in mind, they did have a spinoff around 2021, 2022. So something to keep in mind. Now, the reality of AT&T, at least when it comes to valuation, is the best way to value a more mature company like this, in the later stages of its business life cycle, is to value them with a dividend discount model. So we're going to do exactly that. We'll jump over to the stock valuation sheet and look at AT&T. We'll jump over to our dividend discount model. And what we'll see when we zoom in is interesting. Now, as we already know, they sliced their dividend. So right now the dividend is sitting at about $1.11. But as we also saw earlier, free cashflow is easily covering those dividend payments. So there's absolutely potential for dividend growth in the future. The question is, what is management's capital allocation priorities going to look like moving forward? And from everything I've seen, from their earnings report, from statements from management, the priority is still not growing the dividend right now. They're focused on things like debt reduction and expanding their 5G network. However, those things could be necessary to grow dividends at a faster rate in the future. So when we look at the dividend discount model, assuming 0% in dividend growth forever, in perpetuity, the stock would only be worth about $13.06 per share. So essentially what the market is telling us if we look at this from a reverse dividend discount model perspective is the market expects dividend growth to reassume at some point. So how much dividend growth exactly is priced into this stock? Well, if we bump it up to 3%, we get to about 2079. At 4%, we get much closer to that current share price. So maybe around the 3.8, 3.9% range is what the market is currently pricing into this stock. So while this is certainly the more boring business on the list, it's actually a pretty interesting one to keep up with to see how their capital allocation priorities play out. It's a great case study. Capital allocation is always the most important task of management. So this is one where you're gonna wanna keep a close eye on what's going on with the balance sheet. How is the capital being reinvested and will they continue to grow the dividend at some point in the future? But there you go, those are three stocks where Wall Street currently sees substantial upside. Again, be sure to check out Seeking Alpha's Top Stocks 2026 campaign on January 6th at 12 p.m. Eastern time. I'll personally be tuning in. But with all that being said, thank you guys so much for watching and please don't forget to like and subscribe to the channel.