Teladoc Health, Zoom Video Communications, Amazon, Costco Wholesale and Fiverr International

For Immediate Release

Chicago, IL – July 13, 2020 – Zacks.com announces the list of stocks featured in the Analyst Blog. Every day the Zacks Equity Research analysts discuss the latest news and events impacting stocks and the financial markets. Stocks recently featured in the blog include: Teladoc Health, Inc. TDOC, Zoom Video Communications, Inc. ZM, Amazon AMZN, Costco Wholesale COST and Fiverr International FVRR.

Here are highlights from Friday’s Analyst Blog:

Investing in the “New Normal”: 3 Major Trends That Are Here to Stay

With the recent relaxation of lockdown guidelines followed by mass reopening of a number of states, the nation’s daily new case tally is on the rise again. The last three months’ data had shown a slowdown in new cases, bringing a glimmer of hope. However, the past seven days’ data shows a record increase in the number of new cases.

The catastrophic impact of the pandemic on the financial market has already been widely compared with the great financial crisis of 2008. Though the full impact cannot be gauged at this stage, we can still conclude that the pandemic-led recession that the economy has experienced so far is much worse that the 2008 mayhem.   

The IMF recently expressed deep concern about rising debt in the United States as well as other developed and emerging countries. The excessive numbers of fiscal stimulus packages that have been announced since March has resulted in public debt rising to more than 100% of combined GDP of these nations. On Jul 8, in an online meeting, IMF’s deputy managing director Mitsuhiro Furusawa called for post-pandemic worldwide economic reform stating, “Once the economy gets back on track, (a) medium to long-term fiscal framework must be created to manage public finances accordingly.”

Transition to New Normal

Whether or not an effective vaccine is launched soon, whether or not the outbreak proves to be the biggest economic disaster of modern-day history, this devastation has already started to alter the economy as a whole.

Addressing this transformation as the “new normal,” economists are currently widely talking about the gradually changing consumption-spending pattern of a rational individual, as well as of the entire social paradigm.

This transformation is approaching in the form of changing hygiene sense, eating habits, spending on luxury items, leisurely travel, religious inclination, and over and above notion of livelihood and lifestyle. For example, in this period, there has been a mass shift to careful shopping from extravagant spending earlier. One thing that is getting clearer by the day is that the changes are sweeping and happening fast.

Time for Investors to Act Fast

From an investor point of view, when equity volatility is ratcheting to an all-time high, the best strategy is to shuffle one’s investment portfolio to suit the demands of this ‘new normal.’ At this point, investors can use selloffs within the portfolio to pick stocks based on the changes.

Jim Cramer too recently noted this behavior-changing investment pattern to be incredibly lucrative and addressed these new normal themes as realistic and long lasting.

Three New Normal Trends to Bet On

Already a lot has been said on the growing prosperity of the digital health sector over the past few months as a major choice for contactless healthcare services. Despite the U.S. government’s measures to make both telemedicine and remote patient monitoring mainstream for the past few years, primarily to minimize healthcare cost and increase access to care, the sector struggled to receive mass acceptance.

Nevertheless, post the COVID-19 outbreak, the situation has changed drastically. Telemedicine stocks received an impressive response, when in February, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention asked healthcare service communities to increase the use of telemedicine in broader ways. Further, the FDA has approved the expanded use of remote patient monitoring technologies with the aim of minimizing hospital visits, thereby reducing the risk of exposure to the virus.

We believe, even when normalcy resumes, digital health stocks will keep gaining ground, banking on change in consumer spending toward more contactless services. Going by a Nielsen investigation report, the consumer spending pattern has already transformed to ‘proactive health-minded buying’ with consumer interest growing toward products that support overall maintenance of health and wellness. Here we ask investors to add stocks like Teladoc Health, Inc. The stock currently carries a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy).

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