Zacks
Zacks.com featured highlights Barrick Gold, StoneCo, Synovus Financial and BGC Group
Zacks Equity Research
6 min read

In This Article:

For Immediate Release

Chicago, IL – May 1, 2025 – The stocks in this week’s article are Barrick Gold GOLD, StoneCo STNE, Synovus Financial SNV and BGC Group, Inc. BGC.

4 PEG-Efficient Value Picks to Boost Your Portfolio Returns

At a time when volatility strikes every second day, investors often rely on value investing rather than other options like growth or momentum. As soon as other investors start selling their stocks at a cheaper rate in times of market uncertainty, these value investors take this as an opportunity to pick good stocks at a discounted price.

Several stocks that have surged significantly in the recent past have shown the overwhelming success of this pure-play investment strategy. Here, we discuss four such stocks — Barrick Gold, StoneCo, Synovus Financial and BGC Group, Inc.

However, this apparently simple value investment technique has some drawbacks and not understanding the strategy properly may often lead to “value traps.” In such a situation, these value picks start to underperform over the long run as the temporary problems, which once drove the share price down, turn out to be persistent.

There are many value investment yardsticks such as dividend yield, P/E or P/B, which are simple and can single out whether a stock is trading at a discount.

However, for investors looking to escape such value traps, it is also vital to determine where the stock would be headed in the next 12 to 24 months. Warren Buffett advises these investors to focus on the earnings growth potential of a stock. This is where lies the importance of a not-so-popular value investing metric, the PEG ratio.

PEG Ratio at a Glance

The PEG ratio is defined as (Price/ Earnings)/Earnings Growth Rate

A low PEG ratio is always better for value investors.

While P/E alone fails to identify a true value stock, PEG helps find the intrinsic value of a stock.

There are some drawbacks to using the PEG ratio. It doesn’t consider the very common situation of changing growth rates, such as the forecast of the first three years at a very high growth rate, followed by a sustainable but lower growth rate over the long term.

Hence, PEG-based investing can turn out to be even more rewarding if some other relevant parameters are also taken into consideration.

Here are four stocks that qualified the screening:

Barrick Gold: The company, based in Toronto, Canada, is one of the largest gold mining companies in the world. It has many advanced exploration and development projects located across five continents. Barrick Gold produced 3.9 million ounces of gold and 195,000 tons of copper in 2024. Barrick Gold had 89 million ounces (oz) of proven and probable gold reserves at the end of 2024.

Terms and Privacy Policy
Your Privacy Choices
Utah Privacy Notice
More Info

Recommended Stories