After stocks whipsawed throughout last week , Rob Luna, chief investment strategist at Surevest, said his firm had “started to witness individual stocks outperforming and showing signs of already bottoming.” His prediction is that the S & P 500 could reach the 3,000-3,200 level based on previous bear market valuations. “We have also said that because everyone is eyeing these levels we could easily see a bounce prior,” Luna said. The call came ahead of a stellar Monday for stocks , with the index rising 2.65% to end the day at 3,677. “Everybody’s very scared. There’s a lot of information out there that’s very ambiguous,” Luna told CNBC’s “Street Signs Asia” on Oct. 14. “So when you get so many people that are on the sidelines, that’s a lot of cash that’s left to come in and push things up — short covering rallies, money managers worried about underperforming,” he said. Two themes – and the stocks to play them Luna says he likes two themes currently: travel and “small luxuries.” “People are [moving] away from buying stuff to buying experiences, and I expect travel to remain hot for a while. That is not reflected in current valuations,” he said. He named low-cost carrier Southwest Airlines as one stock he likes. “Southwest is a best-in-breed airline carrier. They’ve been able to manage costs considerably,” Luna said. “I don’t personally own the stock … but I’m actually looking at potentially purchasing that.” Amid any recession, people might not be making long-haul flights to Europe or Asia, he said. “But I think they’d be flying from California to Arizona … These short-haul flights are probably what people will be doing — tightening their budgets.” Luna named Netflix as an example of a “small luxury” stock he likes, as well as Disney . “Netflix at these levels is very attractive as a small luxury and I like what they are doing with ads,” he said. Netflix has plans to launch a cheaper, advertising-supported product in 2023. Ad-supported subscriptions may not be a popular option for everyone, but Luna said there will be some people it will appeal to, such as those “on the border of being able to afford a full priced subscription.” “Netflix is one of [those] I call small luxuries [because] if we are going into recession, people are probably going to spend more time watching Netflix than going out,” he said. The stock is also the “cheapest we’ve ever seen” trading at about 19.5 to 20 times forward earnings, Luna said. Netflix stock is down around 60% year-to-date, Disney is down over 35% and Southwest Airlines is lower by around 25%.
