I've Analyzed 1,000+ Stocks. Here Are The Best (And Worst)

I've grown my portfolio to over £2 million, and after analysing literally hundreds of stocks over the last 15 years, there's one pattern that seems to just repeat itself. It's that the stocks that everyone's buying today usually aren't the ones that'll make you rich tomorrow or 5 years from now. Now, if you're new to the channel, I'm James Helliwell. I'm a former professional trader, and in this video I'll be ranking the most popular stocks amongst retail investors right now from S tier right down to F tier. With the same model that I used to pick stocks back when I was managing 8-figure funds as a pro. Let's get started with the first one, Ferrari. Good feeling about it, but some shit car releases with their electric vehicles in the last year or so has made for a bit of a sell-off. It's currently at a 25% discount to its historical valuation. So this for me could otherwise be S tier given the brand and the growth. It's not B because it's also now quite heavily discounted. I'm going to put it in A tier. Now let's continue on here. We'll pick Micron Technology. Now my first instinct is that it's not A tier despite the gains. I think it's either B or C, but let me take a look at the fundamentals first. This is a super popular stock. I, I dare to think what the valuation is. Let's go ahead and just take a quick look now. It's trading at 36 times cash, which doesn't sound insane. This is, uh, actually a big surprise for me. It ranks in 510th place. The intelligence score, the average of these 7 factors, is 1, 1.5. So we've just seen a speculative burst here over the past year. That's perhaps a controversial one. I'm going to leave it in C. If we're looking at the hype stocks, let's get right to it with Nvidia. Now my intuition suggests putting it in A, possibly even S tier. It ranks 17th, but let's take a look at the valuation. So if we get the historical rating on, wow, the median is actually 58 times free cash. Now that's a high number, but Nvidia where it is currently relative to its own history, even at 41, that's relatively low, relatively cheap, dare I say. It's a close one, but we'll leave it in the same camp as Ferrari. Could potentially go up. NIO, the carmaker, electric vehicles. I'll put that straight in F tier. It is a horror show. There's no way on earth I would ever own that as a pro. It's been the case from day one. If we pull up the chart here, because I know it's not even in the universe, it's not a quality stock to begin with. By style, you can see that even if you bought it at the IPO, you would've lost money. In this case, it has a negative price to free cash flow multiple because it is simply not generating cash. It is not a quality company. In the words of Duncan Bannatyne, I'm out. I'm going to put Tesla in C tier. I've never rated it and I'll show you why. Let's pull up the screener. Tesla sits in the middle of the pack and it's at 200 times free cash flow. Say no more, JR. It's a C-tier company. If it wasn't for Musk, it would be an F, and there's no way I'd own it despite what the share price might be doing. I just don't care. Berkshire Hathaway. In England, it'll be Berkshire. It's not A tier. Berkshire hasn't outperformed the S&P for years now. They've had a change of management. Charlie Munger's passed away and Buffett's an old man now. What worked in the past for them isn't working anymore. I don't rate them any more highly than otherwise investing in the S&P 500, which you can do by buying the ETF. And actually, while we're on that subject, as a popular investment, why don't I rate just investing in the index? I think for most people this is middle of the pack, a B-tier investment. And going forward, I think there's a lot of risk from things like AI disruption that's going to penetrate the majority of companies in the index. And hence, makes the S&P owning the market a far riskier proposition than it might otherwise have been in the past. So somewhere between B and C. Do I think it's risk— as risky as holding Tesla or Micron? No, but I'd put it in the same camp as Berkshire Hathaway. Let's pick a consumer name. What do we have here? Monster. Monster Beverage. I think this is a great company. I'm going to put it straight in A tier. It ranks 18th. It's got a broad footprint. It's compounded for so many years. This was like the best performing US stock listing for about 30 years at 46 times free cash flow. It is pretty expensive compared to 35. We really have to save this for truly elite companies. I tell you what I want to do next. Let's look at ASML. And I know straight away that it should be S tier. And in fact, I am going to upgrade Nvidia. The footprint is incredible, similar to Nvidia, maybe a little bit stronger. It's just had another set of blowout earnings, but a couple of days before that, it was trading at double its historical valuation, like 70 times. Pretty difficult to hold here unless you really, really believe in it. And there are some risks that the Chinese might have got hold of— it depends on who you believe, it could be media propaganda— one of their devices and then have now been able to reverse engineer it and could destroy its niche in its business. But I truly believe that they're truly S tier. Company. Maybe, maybe this is a better one to, to drop down here. Monster is A, and then these are truly exceptional. Okay, carrying on. Alphabet. So Google, this was truly the best stock in the world 3 or 4 years ago, to the point where when I sold my apartment before moving abroad, I was literally going to put my house on it if only it traded about $7 cheaper. You can see that now is ranked 37th, 38th place. I say now because previously it was in the top 10. So I'm not as hot on it as I was previously, but it's still an incredible company. The fact is that when we look at the multiple, it's now up at 65 times. I was going all in on this. I went big, but I was prepared to go all in literally on this with everything I had. Around here when it was around 20 times free cash flow. It just needed to get down to 18 times to an all-time low and I was there. Now it's hideously expensive compared to where it was. I think it's an A for now. So let's continue down here. Amazon. Okay, I'm going to put Amazon B tier. It's not C, but B tier. 300, middle of the pack. It's not the best footprint. Looking at the price trend, there's obviously the AI, the cloud infrastructure stuff supporting it. Let's take a look at the valuation quickly. And yeah, this is weird. It's a B tier company. I know that might sound a little bit almost controversial, but do I rate them on the S&P? Not quite. All right, what else do we have here? PayPal. Oof, it's C. It might even be F tier. Let's just take a look at the fundamentals. Not as bad as I thought, but Yeah. Okay. It's not a company that I want to own. It's had a bit of a shocker. Is it like NIO? Not quite. I'm going to keep it. I'll put it in C tier. I wouldn't own it. Now, by comparison, Visa. This is truly elite. It's straight into S tier along with Mastercard. We haven't got down the list. Basically the same company. It's in like 5th place. That profile is incredible. And while some analysts have flagged AI risk, in reality, these guys have almost a monopoly, a duopoly with Mastercard, as having like a toll booth on the road that is payment processing. Every time you tap your card or even Apple Pay it, Visa or Mastercard are getting paid. It'll be very hard to get credit cards in everybody's hands like these guys have already got. Let's take a look at the valuation just outta curiosity. It's in line. So no problems with this, no doubts. Visa is an S-tier company. Let's move on. That was a nice sunny one. Uh, what else do we have on here? Let's go with AMD. I believe this has been part of the AI-11 rally along with— I think Broadcom is in there on this list. Uh, Samsung I think is also in there, but Off the top of my head, I'd probably put this down in B, middle of the pack, maybe the upper third, but it's looking like it's trading at 100 times free cash flow now, which is just mental. Do I put it down there? It's probably in line with Amazon. I'm not really into that. AMC, it's another meme stock like NIO. The short squeeze is over, so this is absolute garbage. Nonetheless, on Reddit it's very popular. Another company that is absolute garbage, not only the valuation, the way that it's structured. If it wasn't for Musk, well, it, it wouldn't have raised the money that it did. It's F for forget about it. This one you might not know, and it's my favorite stock in the world. Cybersecurity leader ranked number 1 on my screener is Fortinet. It was thrown out unfairly with the software sell-off. If we look at IGV, which is a software ETF, then it had mega earnings which caught everybody then by surprise, apart from myself because I was still holding it. I loved it. And it went from $80 to $160. And if you look back over the years, the trend is pretty special. That's quite something, going IPOing for just over a dollar, let's say $1.60, to now $160. $1.5 billion. That's an incredible move. What a story. And this is the power of the fundamentals, guys. So looking at the valuation, whilst it's at the top of the range compared to some of the names we've looked at, you know, it's not horrendous. It's not trading at 75 times our ASML. Could have owned a below-average valuation only a couple of months ago. This is truly an S-tier stock in my portfolio. Of course, nothing in here is a literal recommendation. I'm just rating the popular stocks as I see them myself. Not recommendation, not advice. You know, I've got to say it, guys. Okay, let's go with Netflix. I can't remember the last time I watched Netflix, and beyond that, it'd be even longer ago that I actually paid for it. We'll take a look at the screener, possibly B. So if we get Netflix up again, guys, there's a link to the description— a link to the description— there's a link to a free trial that you can get of this in the description if you want to check it out along with the other tools. Netflix, 200 out of 600. I think that says all we need to know. It's not getting me massively excited. It's not C tier. We can keep it in B. It's probably similar to Berkshire, to Amazon, maybe AMD. I think that's fair. Caterpillar. This is a brand that everybody knows, and I think a lot of investors would get wrong. I'm inclined to put this as an A tier company, certainly as industrials go. It's A, and I think possibly even elite, but we can of course invest across any sector. It doesn't have to be in the cyclical sector of industrials, but here's the reason why I rate it. Despite on the screener being middle of the pack, this is middle of the pack compared to all sectors, and there's a lot of tech within quality. And no matter how good an industrial stock is, it's going to struggle to compete with tech. Anything struggles to compete with tech. But when you look at how it compares to the sector in white being the average industrial stock, it excels in terms of profitability efficiency. It's in line with durability and growth, other quality industrials, by the way. So I think Caterpillar is A tier. When you look at the trend and how it's compounded, I would otherwise have it in possibly have it in S if it was more highly rated and it wasn't in industrials. But that's the reason it can't get much higher, guys, in the universe is because it's already in a difficult sector to begin with. A great company or an exceptional company in a difficult sector. If it was an exceptional company in a better sector like tech, this would probably be S tier. I think it's a stretch to put it up there. A tier, I think it's fair enough if you want some industrials in your portfolio. It's A tier if you're considering the sector and sort of handicapping or discounting it for that, because generally speaking, you don't want to be in the cyclical sector industries. Might put it in B. So we'll keep it in A. I think it's a solid company. Hermès, luxury brand. This is a tricky one. I'm going to go Given their expensive handbags and their brand value, it's kind of a similar story or similar stock to Ferrari, but they haven't disappointed investors and let things slip. They've still preserved that aura that they have amongst the client base. And yeah, they haven't started, I don't know, doing like what the Swatch Group did with the Omega MoonSwatch. They haven't devalued or cheapened otherwise luxury brands or Ferrari in terms of what they've done with releasing 4-door electric vehicles that nobody really wants, making the customers buy them to get up the list and buy what they really want. So I would say that Hermès has these kind of properties, but I want to check the valuation. I think it's an A tier for now because over time, in years to come, I suspect that whilst the true 0.1%, not that I know any of them, will continue to be affluent, of course, and grow their wealth. I just think that the true luxury and the bulk of spending is going to shift more towards experiences, to being offline and out in nature and face to face, rather than, you know, just blowing on stuff that you've seen on Instagram and lusting after hyped handbags. I think if the popularity of social media begins to decline and people change how they're living their life, they sort of unplug. I just think that the lion's share of spending is shifting away from consumer goods and more towards experiences. That said, if you're going to, I guess, like a resort and you're hanging out in person with similar elites, you're probably going to be status signaling with some nice clobber from Hermès as well, whether it's a twilly or a belt, or more likely a 10 grand plus bag, which probably is worth multiples of that on the secondary market. I've waffled on. Let's take a look at the valuation. If this is in line with history, so it's not trading at a premium, I'll put this in S tier for now. And that's what we can see actually, 40 times compared to 48, 50 times. I think Hermès, just because of the client base, that can be S tier. It's S tier. That's going up there somewhere between S and A, but I'll give it the, uh, give it the benefit of the doubt. While we're in luxury, why don't we cover Rolls-Royce? Now, this is an industrial engineering company. It's not, uh, you got to think of flying commercial rather than being chauffeur-driven in your vehicle, in your private vehicle. Certainly I do anyway. Probably A tier, similar to Caterpillar. It's industrials, but A tier. However, it's been on a bender, as you might say. It's been on a mad one. I was looking for an alternative to that recently. A massive rally, which I think will show up in the multiple here. That's really high, guys, because whilst there's been extremes here, the median's about 6 or 7 times. And if you compare it to just before the pandemic, it was trading at like 5, 6, 7 times free cash. And now at 30 times, it's come so far and it's been in a cyclical industry. Yeah, I'm not comfortable putting it up in A tier with Monster. I think this needs to be B tier. Okay, we'll do a quick and easy one. Apple. Is this S tier? Well, there's so much now riding on the consumer and smartphones. Given AI and innovation, yeah, it's up there, but it is ultimately a consumer brand. I think this is the same as, say, Google and Monster. I think this is A tier but not quite S tier. Kind of makes me feel a bit differently about Hermès and Visa. It's probably similar to those. Let's have a quick look at the model to save my waffle. There we go, 23rd. So it is bloody high. If it was top 10, maybe it would go above Nvidia, Monster. Oh, it's close. It's kind of a similar thing. Let's click in. It's so consensus, everybody knows it, but is it elite? Might be, despite what I've said. Let's have a look. Take a look at the current valuation here as we've been doing for the others. See where it's at. It's definitely better than holding the S&P, in my opinion. Historical median 25 times. It's trading up at 35, 40 times now. For good reason. It just does that. It's better than the S&P, that's for sure. So it is above a B-tier company. It's definitely A-tier. It might even be S-tier. It's Apple. But because it's Apple, can I really put it in, in A? I, I think so, guys. It's perhaps the most— well, one of the most powerful brands and one of the most powerful organizations in the world. Just look at what I'm recording on the iPhone now. Just look at what I'm sat on here, a MacBook. You know, there's Apple products absolutely everywhere. My other videos, if I'm using the iPad, it's, uh, it's S tier. We can, we can keep it up there, keep it up there. Okay, so what else do we have on here? Adobe. Now these guys basically invented software as a service, and for many years this made them certainly A tier, maybe even S tier. However, as we'll see from the screener, there is now a big problem, and despite the fundamental profile, they are at serious risk of redundancy through AI. Disruption. So I'm going to tentatively put this in C, and I might even put it in F, but I want to show you the reason why I'm just hesitating here. It's that flag that I've just mentioned. It's flagged for AI risk. I'm hesitating because it's ranked 14th, but this is a case in point of when the historical fundamentals that, of course, this ranking is based on— it can't predict the future— fundamentals, but it can look at the historical fundamentals and rank them. They could be pretty much redundant going forward. And you can see that reflected in the share price. This has been an absolute horror show, and I just don't see signs of recovery. If we look at Adobe, of course, it's got a well-recognized brand, so there is some moat. Well, is there a moat? No, because AI is destroying it. There's a small bit of intrinsic value, some IP, a little moat, if you could call it that. But it's been, it's been, the castle has been well and truly stormed and it's now trading at only less than 10 times free cash flow. It was as high as 50 times before. Is this now so cheap that it could almost become an investment? I think it's really risky. It would be down here if it wasn't for the valuation and the discount. I think it's only slightly better than the likes of NIO. And maybe a little bit better than AMC. But God, is it even C tier? It might go in F. This is just too risky to touch, guys. Oh, this is a hard one. Would I have it over Tesla? At this valuation, it's probably about the same. Would I have it over Micron? It's a difficult one. This business could have been pretty much destroyed. I'm going to leave it in C for now, but that's only because it's so cheap. Otherwise, it'd be down here. In F, right? Let's look at some of the other names. Uh, JP Morgan. Let's mix things up. A financial stock. In terms of where this ranks on my screener, I seem to think it'll probably come in towards the middle of the pack because again, with it being a bank stock, it's a financial similar to Caterpillar being in the industrial sector. It's in a sector that is hard to compete with tech. With certain luxury brands or staples like Monster and then Hermès and whatever. So let's begin with it in B, but I think there's a chance we upgrade this. My intuition is telling me it's possibly an A tier if you want to own financials. Let's see where it ranks. Now it's kind of in the middle of the pack, exactly as I said, with it being a, a bank financial stock, it's hard to compete with the other quality profile companies, but it is still a quality company nonetheless. Compared to the sector, if you wanted to own a financial stock, a bank stock, it excels, it smashes the industry. So for that reason, I think it would be harsh to knock it down any further. Is it A tier? Well, really, that's in the eye of the beholder. Do you want to own a financial stock, a bank, or not? That's a question that I'm going to ask myself right now. If it's a compelling multiple, then it might persuade me to put it up. But price to free cash flow, free cash flow isn't really the metric to compare a bank on. So do I want to own banks? It's a great compounder historically. Let's go here. Is it better than Rolls-Royce? Probably. Better than Netflix? Probably. AMD? Probably. Amazon? It's in line. Better than the S&P? I think so. Better than Berkshire Hathaway. Yeah, better than Ferrari, maybe. So I'm going to go A tier, similar to Caterpillar. You've got that it's in an unfavorable, perhaps unfavorable or undesirable sector depending on how you look at things, but it is an outstanding company within that less desirable sector. So I think it can be A tier similar to these. I'm okay with that. Okay, moving on. Novo Nordisk. Well, this for me was S tier, but this is one of the nasty surprises or big mistakes that I've encountered in the last year or so as an investor. Eli Lilly was putting its diabetes and then diabetes drugs under severe competition, and then, excuse me, it fell foul to counterfeiting on its weight loss drugs. They issued unthinkable profit warning. The CEO resigned, and what was formerly the biggest company in Europe and made up about 2.5% of Denmark's GDP has suddenly fallen. So with all of that, you could argue that it's C tier, but for the discount. So let me show you where it ranks in the model and we'll take a look. So it's 90th, which isn't super low. So I don't think that's C tier. But so much of this is potentially now just destroyed this track record. I think that's an error there. Hasn't been wiped off the face of the earth, don't worry. But here's the correction. Well, it's not a correction, the bear market that it's endured. But believe it or not, it's still— the share price is still higher than it was just before the pandemic. Which is quite remarkable even after this incredible drop from 900, uh, this would be kroner, Danish kroner, down to 200. An incredible rerating. So let's take a look at Novo Nordisk, look at the valuation, and here we are, less than 10 times cash flow. So it is priced for death, but I'm sure despite profit warnings and near-term problems, this company has such a long history and otherwise strong track record, as you can see here, in fact, back to pretty much when I was born in 1988. Surely things will improve from here. They might not recover fully, but surely they're going to improve given some of the IP, the people that they have. Even though they've replaced the key decision maker or the spokesperson and the CEO, I'm sure that there's some really talented people there. And, you know, people who have left for Lilian, whatever. But at less than 10 times free cash flow, I'm not going to write this off and put it down in C and certainly not in F tier. It's gone through a horrendous period, which you've seen it down probably there temporarily, but I'm going to keep it B or C. It's kind of similar to Adobe, but the things that disrupted Novo Nordisk might pass. I don't think the risk of AI threatening software is going to pass. And I'd favour a company that's out there producing the drugs that it is to solve the problems that it is over what Adobe does, which is more easily replaced by software. I guess they're both fallen foul in Novo's case to counterfeiting and competition from other markets, but they have genuine IP that, I don't know, software can just replicate what Adobe does. People are still taking those drugs and they're incredibly efficacious from what I read. So, oh God, between B and C, I'm going to go B tier because it previously was so, so highly rated. So how are we doing here? We probably got through the best part of, I don't know, 30 companies so far. So let's do a quickfire round. Meta. This might have been S tier. Or A tier previously. I'm going to put it in A tier because it still controls a lot of the world through the algorithms. And if you own a business, it seems that you need to be spending on ads similar to Google. And it is a platform that's cyclically exposed, therefore more so than you might think, to business spending, the business cycle, and to the consumer. Because ultimately it's mainly a consumer platform. I despise the company in terms of what it does and its technologies. I refuse to sponsor or endorse it as a person, as a creator, and a business owner. I think it's very toxic, and I hope that going forward— it's just my personal opinion— that more people wake up to the harm that this platform is doing. Um, I think you can learn some wonderful things on YouTube whilst it is still algorithmically compounding and creating an echo chamber. I think it's a more positive place to be than short form is, and specifically the likes of Instagram and other short form platforms. We'll include Facebook as well, of course, in this. Um, it is a pretty despicable, toxic product. It's A-tier because it does, for that reason, have pretty incredible fundamentals. But it's one that I really disagree with. It's ranked 16th, so I think I'll end the crusade there. Put it in A-tier, not S-tier. For old time's sake, we'll have a look at the valuation. So it's spending big on the metaverse. So it can manipulate people in 4D, in the new dimension. At 34 times compared to 30, 10 to 15% premium. That's okay. Historically, I was very bullish on this in late 2018, '19 when it's trading not much above 20 times free cash flow. Owned it for the fund, remained pretty bullish on it. This is when it underwent a massive sell-off and it was hugely out of favor for a period of time here, which on a log scale now looks like nothing after the sell-off it saw here from 2021 as rates were being hiked. But yeah, it's great for all the wrong reasons. But yeah, it is unfortunately A-tier because I wish, you know, you could kind of get rid of it, but It's A tier, not quite S, but it's A tier. Moving on, Lockheed Martin, a defence company, another controversial, potentially, or perhaps controversial one. Again, can't say that I agree with the industry that it's in. It serves a necessary function in defending country, having to fight wars, and the extent to which those are entirely necessary in terms of their origins is a different matter. Not for me to get too involved in. I seem to think this is perhaps a B tier or C tier company. Once again, it's categorised within industrials, so it's a better company, I believe, within industrials, but it's not a company that I want to own. I will put it down there and I think I'm actually going to stick Adobe in F tier because of that AI risk. And I would put Lockheed, maybe it's in line with Novo Nordisk. Do I pull Novo down to C? I think I'm going to. Um, that makes it a bit more comfortable for me. That kind of makes sense. Down— Novo's probably down with PayPal, might be a little bit better. Uh, Lockheed, let's just do a head check here. So if we do LMT, 156, it's not so bad actually, not so bad. Let's just check, where was it going here? It might be C tier. Up with Rolls-Royce. Just have a look. It's actually quite a good profile. Um, it is a compounder. I think with this, maybe deserves a little, little bit more fairness. Is it better than the S&P or in line with the S&P? I'd say in line with the S&P. So I think that's okay there. Um, it's better than these. I'm happy with that. Microsoft. Many people would probably put this in S tier. Uh, I'm going to say A tier. People forget that it went sideways, I think, was it 2014, 2015 for a number of years? And it's just been on a tear for recent years. There you go. There was kind of a lost decade even since the dot-com. It was through to 2014, all the way back to sort of 2004 when it began to recover after the bust. And it saw the rerating there as cloud basically, and AI, things like that were beginning to come through Azure and of course the existing Windows business as well. So is it elite? For me, not quite. I'm going to pull up the valuation. Let's just take a quick look at the footprint as well. Okay, it's in 8th place. This is probably where my personal opinion is getting in the way of the facts, and this is a good reminder to check yourself sometimes, check your ego, and maybe just accept what's there. Let's see where it's at. It is more cyclical than you might think at 40 times versus 35. I think this is, uh, I'd rate this the same as Google, as Alphabet. Yeah, it's not quite S. Oh, maybe it is. Maybe Apple comes down here. Maybe it does. Okay, I'll try and, I'll try and keep this more quickfire from here. Okay, we've got some of the semiconductor names or AI 11 names here. That are the best performing stocks year to date. Intel is a C. Samsung might be a B. Taiwan Semiconductor, I think, is much higher. So let's take a quick look at where these rank on our list. So we'll begin with— what was the first one? Intel. This has become super popular in the AI trade. It's basically down at the bottom in terms of the score. So I think that is bullshit, basically. If we look at the valuation, we can go to price to free cash flow, which is negative. So this is just crap. It's not uninvestable, it's not an F tier like these lot, but it's C tier. I wouldn't own it over Novo Nordisk, for example. So that might come as a surprise. The next one was Samsung. I don't think this is in this particular universe, but when you look at the I've looked at the quality profile separately, kind of have an idea of the fundamentals. But for Pace here, we'll keep it up. 28 times free cash, that's not insane as a number. And compared to its history, sure, it's at a premium now, but, uh, it's not unheard of, sort of 25 to 30 times historically. And it is in the AI11 trade this year, so it's gone nuts., but it is a better quality company. And looking at that history, this is a compounder. So I'm happy with Samsung being in B. If I had better visibility of the fundamental footprint here, I might upgrade it to A. So I'm going to leave it around here. It's probably in line with the market, maybe slightly above longer term. Do I expect— let's take a look— Samsung to beat the market over the long run? I think so. Let's see what it's done. It's obviously gone wild here. Let's look over, say, 5 years. This is the thing. It underperformed over 5 years. It's really massively recovered over only in the last 6 months. It's kind of lagging. So I'm fine with it being fine with it being in line with the market down here. Okay, Taiwan Semi. This is a different story. So basically the biggest foundry. So the part of the value chain that actually makes the chips. Everything flows into this. And yeah, there is talk, quite rightly, of a bond bubble, a big debt bubble in AI. And that is a concern. I've just made a video on it. Go and check that out. It's also on the channel. And yeah, in terms of where this is ranking, where are we? 56th. Okay. So it is towards the top. I'd say this is A tier. Let's just see what the valuation is because perhaps we could upgrade it. It's looking at 58. Okay, so similar, it's the exact same rating as ASML at 58 times free cash and the median's 42. So I think it's probably a similar story to ASML, but for the fact that it ranks in 56th place rather than 3rd place. So we will give Taiwan Semiconductor B tier, uh, sorry, A tier. A tier for that up there, the second one. All right, moving on. Lam Research, LRCX. This could be S tier, but it's comfortably A tier. I know before pulling this up because it's a stock that I've owned in the past for quite some time along with the likes of KLA. It's ripped in the AI 11 or so rally year to date. Even compared to other stocks in semiconductors and tech, it excels. And overall, it's not surprisingly a leading company. The valuation, I think, now is going to be horrendously expensive compared to where it's been. Let's take a look. That is— apologies, the yield. We need the multiple. 65 times, was trading at 90 times. But it's well above the median of only 21. So it is at a ghastly premium right now. But if we just reload this, where are we? We'll take a look at the chart. And this has been one of my best performing positions for, uh, for some time. But up here now, I, I just wouldn't bring myself to, uh, initiate a new position. So This is definitely A. It perhaps could go a little bit higher. 35th. It's up there. It's up there. Have we been too kind to Visa? No. So the moat, it's up there. Okay. So finishing off Ford. Why would you own a carmaker? Seriously, apart from Ferrari, which is really a luxury brand, why would you own such an industrial stock? They have such high costs. They're so sensitive to the consumer to the market cycle. It's Ford. It nearly went bankrupt, didn't it, with like GM and so on back in the day. Where does it rank? 573. It is a quality stock according to MSCI, the MSCI World ratings agency. Where are we? It's down there. Is it F tier? It'd be ironic for Ford. Let's take a look. Where is it trading? See what is priced in. Where sentiment is. And you can see here at 6 times free cash flow, it's at a premium currently. What's the share price doing? Sweet F/A for 30 years, nearly absolutely F/A apart from downside. So for me, particularly considering how this is classified as a quality stock within that universe, Ford, I'm going to give it F just for the irony. That's F tier. I would rather own— would I? I'd probably rather own Tesla over Ford. Probably just. So yeah, Ford is F tier, appropriately. What else do we have here? Okay, so AI 11 name Oracle. Ooh, Larry Ellison, possibly A or B. I think this is probably going to be B, so I don't think it ranks that highly. Let's have a look. At where it is. 240 out of 600, I would say that's B. Let's have a look at the footprint. Okay, it's not the broadest. The share price had gone crazy, but it's corrected as well hard. I think there's stuff perhaps politically going on with this, dare I say, in terms of ownership and other interests. If we go down to the price to free cash flow, that appears to be negative. So there's just no way that I would otherwise entertain this. It's not stable in terms of cash flow, and I think that shows up in the volatility of the share price. This again being a log scale, but it was approaching 300 and it's now down at 120. So where are we on here? Is it B or C? I'm going to— what was it? 148th. Yeah. Am I being Am I being harsh putting it down there? Yeah, I think, I think I'm going to leave it with Intel down there, guys. All right, Broadcom, on the other hand, I can say that is A tier confidently. I don't think it's quite S tier. At times it's perhaps looked that way, but I think it slipped a little bit in the ranking. It's now 84th, so mine needs to drop that a little bit. Let's take a look at the valuation because this was an insane premium. Going back a few months ago, let's see where it is relative to that. So at like 53, 54 times compared to 16, it's been on a wild one. It's not S tier. Is it A tier or B? It's hard to argue with a trend like that. I do think that it's A tier. Yeah, I'd rate it with maybe, maybe LAMM needs to go up, but I'd rate it here. I think that's fair. It's, uh, it's not below, say, JP Morgan or Caterpillar. I think that's fair. So we've got a couple left, Arista Networks and LVMH. Let's do Arista. We're kind of filling up there. I think this is A tier. It might even be S. Let's just take a look here. Um, so these guys are providing infrastructure for AI. It's like cables and network shit. Um, Ranked 20th. This could be S tier. This is a pretty darn elite stock and certainly a compounder. Let's have a look at the valuation. This could sway me if it's anywhere near its historical average. You know what, this could be S tier. Let's see, that's in line with the average. This is upgraded to— oh, where are we? Broadcom, get back in there. Wants to go there. Arista Networks, I'm going to upgrade to S tier along with these other names. That is an S tier company. Now finally, LVMH. We've seen Hermès up in S tier, but LVMH is exposed more to the middle class rather than the true upper class or 0.1%. It's more of an aspirational luxury brand and it's more cyclically exposed to tourism. Asia demand than Hermès is, for example. So for that reason, it's more cyclical than you might think. And it's a company that I loved and I owned for a bunch of time. It became Europe's most valuable company by market cap with Bernard Arnault, nearly 80 years old, I think the owner becoming Europe's richest man for a period of time. It is a fantastic company and it's one that I've really loved in the past, but I haven't owned for the last few years and I would always prefer Hermès over it's going to be an A or a B, I think. But let's just see where it ranks here before we go any further and round off. It may no longer even be in the universe. It's actually dropped out, I think, of the quality universe, which makes it a tricky one. Let's take a look at the valuation because it does have a quality stock profile, in my opinion. Trading now down at like 17 times compared to 24 times. It has seen a pretty big rerating and the truth will be in the price, guys. Yeah, it's certainly not S tier. Is it A tier or B tier? Hmm. I must say I probably got out of this at the right time with the benefit of hindsight. This was an A tier stock or company for a long time. You got this, you got the cyclicality. I think it's B tier, guys. It's probably in line with Ferrari. So there we go. That is the final ranking. The S tier stocks. ASML, Nvidia, Visa, Fortinet, Hermes, Arista Networks, Monster, and Alphabet. I might like to upgrade there. Apple possibly will make it up there. And then yeah, down at the bottom, the nonsense of NIO, AMC, SpaceX, Adobe— could be a bit harsh, but Adobe's down there— and Ford. So what I might do now is just pull up a chart. We can include up to 10 stocks on TradingView as a basket, and let's see how these have performed historically. The green line is just the 6 S-tier stocks, and then the blue line is expanded. It's just taking the first few, so those 6 names plus the first few from the A-tier, just to give us an idea of how these might have performed. Let's take a look relative to the market. The S&P, and there you go. Obviously, there's some look-ahead bias with this because we're basing on the historical fundamentals which have been realized and therefore priced into the share price over the years. But the quality profile of these businesses, we've got to think in terms of owning those business models. Are they likely to change? Some of them, like Adobe, is the reason they're not up there because of the risk of disruption from AI. All of that shows in the screener. Again, if you want to check this out, there'll be a link in the description for 7-day free trial. Just cancel it before it bills you if you don't want to continue. It's completely fine. But hopefully that has shared some insights into the types of companies that I look for and the types of companies, despite the popularity, that you should be looking to avoid. And if you've enjoyed this video, then watch this one next where I show you exactly how I've rebuilt my £2 million plus portfolio with many of these companies. See you in the next one.