Benzinga's 'Stock Whisper' Index: 5 Stocks Investors Secretly Monitor But Don't Talk About Yet

Each week, Benzinga’s Stock Whisper Index uses a combination of proprietary data and pattern recognition to showcase five stocks just under the surface and warrant attention.

Investors are constantly on the hunt for undervalued, under-followed and emerging stocks. With countless methods available to retail traders, the challenge often lies in sifting through the abundance to uncover new information.

This index layers editorial commentary to help make sense of why these stocks should be of interest and whether investors or casual readers should watch them.

Here is a look at the Benzinga Stock Whisper Index for the week of Feb. 23:

Mastercard Inc MA: The credit card company saw increased interest from investors likely related to the $35 billion takeover of Discover Financial Services DFS announced by Capital One Financial Corp COF.

The acquisition could cause headwinds for Mastercard and Visa Inc V, which are leaders in the credit card market. Capital One uses Visa and Mastercard for its credit cards and recently renewed partnerships. After the partnerships end, Capital One could transition to Discover and away from Visa and Mastercard.

Visa shares also saw increased interest from Benzinga readers according to proprietary data.

Lululemon Athletica Inc LULU: The apparel company joins the index with increased interest from readers likely due to a ratings update from Needham. The Buy rating and the price target of $525 were reiterated by Needham and come in ahead of the recent price of $455 and the 52-week high of $516.39.

The company is expected to report fourth-quarter financial results in March. In the third quarter, Lululemon beat Street consensus estimates for both revenue and earnings per share. The company said it was pleased with the early performance of the holiday season in the fourth quarter. Shares of the apparel company are up over 40% in the past year, but remain down around 11% year-to-date in 2024.

Super Micro Computer SMCI: The technology company is carried over from last week’s Stock Whisper Index. Super Micro Computer is one of the fastest-gaining stocks in recent weeks and shares are up over 1,000% in the past year.

Analysts have been sharing increased price targets as the stock continues higher. After a pullback from highs, Super Micro shares saw a +33% gain on Thursday, likely due to peer company NVIDIA Corp NVDA reporting strong fourth-quarter earnings and seeing shares up. Super Micro recently announced that it is expanding its portfolio of AI solutions.

Adobe Inc ADBE: The content creation company saw shares fall early in the week potentially related to ChatGPT parent OpenAI releasing teaser trailers for is text-to-video tool Sora. The release of Sora expands the artificial intelligence capabilities that users of OpenAI can have at their fingertips.

Several Adobe products are used by people to create images and videos and the new OpenAI tools may see users move over to the rival. Adobe reports first-quarter financial results in mid-March and may be asked for more details on the potential competition by analysts.

Short S&P 500 ETFs: When looking at the proprietary data used to construct the Stock Whisper Index, ETFs also show up many times with increased interest from readers. ETFs are generally left off the index unless something big jumps out, which is the case this week with two (Benzinga is giving you a bonus Stock Whisper pick this week) S&P 500 inverse ETFs seeing elevated interest.

The ProShares UltraShort S&P 500 SDS and ProShares Short S&P 500 SH inverse ETFs both saw increased interest. The funds seek to offer performance that is the inverse of the S&P 500 index or in the case of the UltraShort ETF, two times the performance of the S&P 500.

Increased interest in the inverse S&P 500 indexes comes as the index and the tracking ETFs like the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust SPY hit record highs and the index passed the 5,000 milestone.

Benzinga previously shared that the performance of the Magnificent 7 stocks has made up a large portion of the S&P 500 Index gains and the performance of the index is widely outpacing S&P 500 ETFs that are equally weighted. Investors may think that a pullback in the S&P 500 is coming given the increased interest in inverse ETFs.

Stay tuned for next week’s report, and follow Benzinga Pro for all the latest headlines and top market-moving stories here.

Read the latest Stock Whisper Index reports here:

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