Hennion & Walsh’s Kevin Mahn on his top stock picks: CRWD, MSFT, LLY, RYTM

Our next guest says AI isn’t the only game in town for the markets. For some stocks and sectors to watch as we head into the last trading day of the quarter, we want to bring in Kevin Mon. He is the president and chief Investment Officer at Hen yen and Walsh Asset Management. Kevin, you’re talking about technology, but not just the AI names that we’ve been focused on. Where do you kind of see this, this after effect? Is this the third derivative of AI or is this completely separate? Yeah, Becky, AI has certainly been the tail wagging the stock market dog thus far this year and it is transformative in nature and AI will provide investment opportunities for investors consider for years to come. But there are also other transformative technologies that are out there. How about cyber security? We’ve seen an increase in the amount of AI powered cyber attacks out there. So what do you need to work those AI powered cyber attacks? Well, you need AI generated cyber security and a company like Crowd Strike provides the opportunities for such a thing with their cloud based security platforms. I also think in terms of the AI race, a company like Microsoft may be the ultimate winner, although there’ll be more than one winner. Microsoft of course, with their strategic investment in the Open Eye AI platform, what they’re doing with Copilot, the stock pays a dividend of just under 1% and they have the staying power and they have the cash in their balance sheet to stay with AI and make more acquisitions in that area. I mean that that says that you’re not afraid of stocks that have had big run UPS, crowd strikes up 150% over the last year, Microsoft up more than 50%. No, I would argue that there’s reasons why those stocks have run up as much as they are. Of course, from a valuation standpoint, they are a little rich at these levels, but I could make a very good argument over the next 5 to 10 years that companies in the cybersecurity arena like Crowd Strike and companies devoted and committed to AI with strong balance sheets will provide even more upside potential. But of course, Becky, AI and technology isn’t the only area that I believe that’s going to leave markets and the economy higher moving forward. Yeah, healthcare too. We’ve only got about a minute left, Kevin. But where are are you seeing the places that you like within the healthcare sector? Sure, Healthcare, you can invest in two different ways, Becky. One is through large cap pharmaceutical companies. Secondly, through smaller cap biotech companies. There’s a lot of fascination right now on weight loss drugs or obesity related drugs in the large cap arena. How about Eli Lilly with their Zep bound product or even Monjara which is a type 2 diabetes treatment that also has weight loss characteristics. And then in the small cap space, we like and we haul Rhythm Pharmaceuticals, a $2.4 billion small cap biotech company that’s developing treatments for rare disorders of obesity and other GI related disorders. I think the pace of activity in MA as it relates from large cap Pharmaceuticals buying smaller cap biotech companies is only going to increase in 2024 and Rhythm Pharmaceuticals could be a likely candidate for that type of MA activity.