Black Friday. Cyber Monday. The retailers are out in force, with a massive marketing push to win consumer dollars during this key holiday shopping season. One dubious gift from 2022 is much lower stock prices. Just like retail merchandise, stocks seemingly are at a big discount right now. But investors must shop with care, focusing, in our opinion, on quality companies with solid finances, proven track records, and strong management teams. This week, we used the Argus Screening Tool to find a list of companies that appear to be low risk, have strong balance sheets, and seemingly represent undervalued opportunities. Specifically, we screened the Argus Universe of Coverage for companies with a BUY rating, a market cap over $8 billion, and with a HIGH financial strength rating from Argus. Then we sorted for those furthest away from their Argus 12-month target price (suggesting a deep discount). The following list is weighted towards Technology -- which is not surprising after the beating the sector has taken so far this year.

Stocks rose on Wednesday morning as investors weighed new employment and manufacturing data, and awaited the release of the Fed's latest meeting minutes this afternoon. The Labor Department said that first-time claims for state unemployment benefits rose by 17,000 to 240,000 for the week ended November 19, above the Reuters consensus forecast of 225,000. Capital goods orders were stronger than expected. The Commerce Department said that orders for core capital goods excluding aircraft rose 0.7% in October after a 0.8% decline in September. The consensus forecast had called for flat orders last month. The Dow rose 0.1%, the S&P 0.3%, and the Nasdaq 0.7%. Crude oil fell sharply to $78 per barrel, while gold traded near $1744 per ounce.

The major blue-chip indices (SPX, OEX, NYSE, INDU) as well as the S&P 400 MidCap (MDY) and the small-cap Russell 2000 (IWM) all remain in nice bullish channels off their respective October lows. The Nasdaq as well as the Nasdaq 100 (QQQ) have traced out higher highs and higher lows, but continue to have a difficult time generating a lot of upside.

Stocks rose on Tuesday morning amid more comments on rate hikes from Fed officials and earnings reports from major retailers. Best Buy shares rose 10% after the company posted above-consensus 3Q revenue and EPS, and raised its full-year sales outlook. Dollar Tree shares fell 10%, despite solid 3Q results, as the discount retailer said that 2022 earnings would come in toward the low end of its guidance range. The Dow rose 0.8%, the S&P 0.6%, and the Nasdaq 0.1%. Crude oil rose 2% to $81.50 per barrel, while gold traded near $1745 per ounce.

Vickers Stock Research, a subsidiary of Argus Research Group, tracks and analyzes insider trading and institutional ownership trends. Form 13-Fs are due 45 days after the end of calendar quarters, and have now come in from 3Q22. We like to review the 13Fs of the major activist investors, including Carl Icahn, Trian Fund Management, Jana Partners, and ValueAct Holdings (among others) in order to determine their core holdings and new purchases. Activist investing has evolved in recent years and is now less about generating a short-term return on an underpriced stock and more about achieving long-term returns through an active management/investor partnership. Here are some recent new purchases and key holdings of Activist investors, according to Vickers.