We’re growing increasingly worried about some richly valued companies in our portfolio, including the likes of Nvidia (NVDA) and Microsoft (MSFT). Expensive stocks remain out of favor on Wall Street — just as they had been for much of last year — and there could be more room for them to fall as recession fears mount. Other stocks in Jim Cramer’s Charitable Trust , the portfolio we use for the Club, do not carry the same level of valuation risk. We wanted to call attention to some of those lower-multiple stocks that we believe are worth watching. We’re focusing on forward price-to-earnings ratios, calculated by dividing share price by estimated earnings-per-share over the next 12 months. The quotient is what’s known as the multiple . The S & P 500 ‘s overall multiple has fallen over the past year, going from around 21x forward earnings in early January 2022 to around 16.8x on Thursday. A lot goes into what investors are willing to pay for a stock, including higher interest rates — which make bond yields more competitive with stock returns — and the growth rate of a company’s profits relative to peers. As an investor looking to buy a stock, it may be easier to run the P/E in reverse. In this high-level hypothetical, start with the multiple you want to pay and multiply that by forward earnings estimates. If you’re willing to assign a 10 multiple to earnings per share of $5, that translates to a stock price of $50. But now growth is less certain and interest rates are going up, so you think paying 10x forward earnings is too risky. Instead, you think paying 8x forward earnings is more appropriate, meaning you’re only willing to pay $40 per share. Eventually it becomes clear profits are shrinking, and the company won’t earn $5 per share anymore; estimates now call for EPS of $4. In this scenario, paying 8x future earnings is too rich because the earnings growth is less robust. You determine you’re only willing to pay 7x forward earnings of $4 per share, translating to a stock price of just $28. This is an oversimplified explanation, to be sure. But it offers a look at what happens to stock prices when investors, in general, are less willing to pay a premium for a stock in an environment where that company’s earnings growth is slowing down and bonds are increasing in attractiveness. Right now, a key problem for the market is that many investors believe earnings estimates are too high. If the Federal Reserve stays hawkish and the U.S. economy continues to weaken and tip into recession, corporate profits may erode more than currently expected. This could intensify the pressure on stock prices. Higher-multiple stocks have a smaller margin for error in situations like this. Even a slight downward revision to earnings could lead to a considerable decline in richly valued shares. With this in mind, here are six Club stocks that currently fit our definition of reasonably priced, meaning they trade either around or below the S & P 500’s overall…
Read More: These 6 Club stocks look reasonably priced as Wall Street shuns high