Sixteen stocks to pull you through stagnant growth

With sovereign debt continuing to trouble the eurozone, the banks still perilously unstable and China's economy heading for a hard landing, where should you put your money now? John Stepek puts the question to MoneyWeek's panel of experts, who tip 16 stocks to buy now.

John Stepek: The banks have been in the press a lot, but would any of you buy them?

Chris White: The buy' case for banks goes something like this: banks are trading at a big discount to net book value. In three years' time they will be making 15% returns on equity, compared to a 10% cost of equity, say. So they should trade on 1.5 times book on a three-year view, you might make a decent return. The trouble is, I think this prospect has been pushed further into the future by a whole host of factors, from GDP slowing to Greek debt write-offs. If you look at Lloyds, for example, the core business is making money. But it has a bad bank, which is big enough to write off hundreds of millions of pounds on. So it's very hard to make confident predictions.

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IomartLSE: IOM
NCCLSE: NCC
ASOSLSE: ASC
VodafoneLSE: VOD
GlaxoSmithKlineLSE: GSK
Brit Am TobaccoLSE: BATS
G4SLSE: GFS
Imperial TobaccoLSE: IMT
Smiths GroupLSE: SMIN
FirstgroupLSE: FGP
PennonLSE: PNN
IG GroupLSE: IGG
PetrofacLSE: PFC
WPPLSE: WPP
LancashireLSE: LRE
Tata MotorsNYSE: TTM
John Stepek

John Stepek is a senior reporter at Bloomberg News and a former editor of MoneyWeek magazine. He graduated from Strathclyde University with a degree in psychology in 1996 and has always been fascinated by the gap between the way the market works in theory and the way it works in practice, and by how our deep-rooted instincts work against our best interests as investors.

He started out in journalism by writing articles about the specific business challenges facing family firms. In 2003, he took a job on the finance desk of Teletext, where he spent two years covering the markets and breaking financial news.

His work has been published in Families in Business, Shares magazine, Spear's Magazine, The Sunday Times, and The Spectator among others. He has also appeared as an expert commentator on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, BBC Radio Scotland, Newsnight, Daily Politics and Bloomberg. His first book, on contrarian investing, The Sceptical Investor, was released in March 2019. You can follow John on Twitter at @john_stepek.