My Top 10 Picks for 2026

FOR more than 30 years, I have offered an annual list of 10 stocks with the potential to beat the market in the 12 months ahead. My selections for 2024 notched the highest return ever, but my choices for 2025 flamed out. They scored an average of a mere 5.9%, compared with 21.5% for the benchmark S&P 500 index. Six out of 10 stocks fell, four by more than 20% each. What hurt me most? Not having any of the mega-capitalization tech stocks that provided the lift for the S&P 500. I correct the oversight this time around.

- BY JAMES K. GLASSMAN

I am still ahead of the game by about three percentage points over the past 10 years, but mean reversion is dragging me down to the index, which is what is supposed to happen in theory.

Following tradition, I have chosen nine stocks for 2026 from the broader choices of experts that I trust, and I include one of my own.

The best 2025 performer by far was Shopify, returning 122.3%. It is still a top holding of ARK Innovation, the go-go exchange-traded fund run by Cathie Wood. Her most recent acquisition is Exact Sciences (symbol EXAS), a money-losing cancer diagnostics company. Its best-known product is Cologuard, an at-home, noninvasive version of a colonoscopy. Exact Sciences is an unloved stock in a sector with a bright future—a good combination—and it's cheap enough for a takeover.

Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway had a big winner in 2025 with Heico, an aerospace-parts provider. Lately, Berkshire has doubled its position in one of my longtime favorite stocks, Louisiana-based Pool (POOL), distributor of swimming pool supplies, with a market capitalization (outstanding shares multiplied by the current stock price) of just $10 billion, or nearly so. Revenues and profits have been disappointing over the past few years, and the stock has fallen by half since the end of 2021. But it's a strong Buffett-style franchise business with a large installed base of pools that need supplies regularly, and sales are reviving.

Oberweis Micro-Cap is a fabulous mutual fund with a lofty but justified expense ratio of 1.47%. The fund's 2024 pick was the top performer, but its stock for 2025, Cellebrite DI, was a small loser. For 2026, I like one of the few stocks Oberweis has added to its portfolio recently: