<p><img src="https://static2.businessinsider.com/image/60f0a050016a320018836861-988/GettyImages-163161012.jpg" border="0" alt="Traders react by high fiving at the end of trade at the New York Stock Exchange in New York," data-mce-source="EMMANUEL DUNAND/AFP via Getty Images" data-mce-caption="Traders react by high fiving at the end of trade at the New York Stock Exchange in New York," data-link="https://www.gettyimages.co.uk/detail/news-photo/traders-react-by-the-end-of-trade-at-the-new-york-stock-news-photo/163161012'adppopup=true"></p><p></p><bi-shortcode id="summary-shortcode" data-type="summary-shortcode" class="mceNonEditable" contenteditable="false">Summary List Placement</bi-shortcode><p>As major brokerage firms slashed their commissions and allowed for easy and quick trades, more people began to join the ranks of individual traders and investors.</p><p>Retail investors now account for <a href="https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/retail-investors-quarter-of-stock-market-coronavirus-volatility-trading-citadel-2020-7">about 20% of stock-market</a> activity on average, Joe Mecane, the head of execution services at Citadel Securities, told Bloomberg. That's up from 10% in 2019. </p><p>But some of these new investors end up trading on misinformation or FOMO. And that caught the attention of Amrit Rupasinghe, a product manager who began his career as a business analyst at Tungsten Property and worked was a financial analyst at Citi.</p><p>So he came up with the idea of creating a platform called <a href="https://www.wallstrank.com/">Wall St. Rank</a>, a website that compiles and organizes single-stock analyst ratings, price targets, and earnings forecasts from various investment firms including top-tier ones such as JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs. Companies that aggregate similar data include Bloomberg, <a href="https://www.tipranks.com/">TipRanks</a>, and <a href="https://www.nasdaq.com/market-activity/quotes/analyst-research">Nasdaq</a>. </p><p>"The kind of impetus for building Wall Street Rank was when I was helping friends and family understand how to filter out the noise during the pandemic when Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube had a lot of these first-time investors that were also giving investment advice to people, in a broad sense, with no kind of credibility," Rupasinghe said. </p><p>"It was important for me to be able to point people to a source to cut the noise out," he added. </p><p>Rupasinghe told Insider the website uses an application programming interface to scrape public data on analysts' price targets and compile it in one place. </p><p>The website then allows users to filter stocks by categories such as those with the highest expected earnings and revenues, or with "buy" ratings from analysts. </p><p>"A lot of these price targets are produced publicly and available to the public, but they just don't know where to go get it," Rupasinghe said. "So what we do is we just collect it across the web, and then we also use the API to power some of the rating information."</p><p>Rupasinghe was later joined by <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/one-tiktok-investing-influencer-shares-his-strategies-for-picking-stocks-2021-6">Austin Hankwitz</a>, who had started his career as a financial analyst at a healthcare company called Amedisys. He became a bit of a TikTok celebrity after he posted videos about how to vet stocks under the username <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@austinhankwitz'lang=en">austinhankwitz</a>. He now has almost 500,000 followers and is Wall St. Rank's strategic advisor.</p><h2><strong>Stocks with high upside </strong></h2><p>In a joint interview with Insider on July 14, Rupasinghe and Hankwitz used the website's filter feature to find five mid-cap stocks that have a "strong buy" rating for the next 12 months. These stocks also have a high upside potential, judging by the difference between stock prices and analysts' average one-year target prices.</p><p>Additionally, they filtered the list by what they call "high accuracy," which means a stock has a higher likelihood of hitting the average target because the ratings are backed by at least 15 Wall Street analysts, Rupasinghe said. </p><p>"We found that if there are more analysts covering a stock, the accuracy of hitting that price target is much higher," Rupasinghe said.</p><p>Hankwitz said regardless of the ease and accuracy of using a platform such as theirs, users should always do their own research when investing.</p><p>He added that even though price targets are for a 12-month period, investors should check these ratings on a weekly basis because they are dynamic and change based on earnings reports and news that could impact a company. </p><p>Hankwitz noted that there can be delays in updates based on the sources publishing the data. </p><h3>1. Baidu (BIDU)</h3><img src="https://static2.businessinsider.com/image/60f060a5bb790e0018207c2d-400-300/1-baidu-bidu.jpg" alt="" /><p><p>The Chinese tech company Baidu ranked first based on both filters.</p><p>It traded near $181.34 as of Wednesday with an average price target of $308.43, representing up to 70% upside. This stock has 42 analysts.</p><p>According to Mizuho Securities, which has a $350 price target on the company, Baidu's core advertising long-term outlook remains stable with incremental growth year-over-year. Also, Baidu Cloud should soon enable developers and system integrators to serve enterprise clients directly.</p></p><br/><br/><h3>2. Micron Technology (MU)</h3><img src="https://static1.businessinsider.com/image/60f06699bb790e0018207c4b-400-300/2-micron-technology-mu.jpg" alt="" /><p><p>Micron is a US-based producer of computer memory and data storage.</p><p>Micron traded near $78.66 on Wednesday. According to Wall St. Rank, the average stock price target from 31 analysts was $118.63, representing more than a 50% upside.</p><p>According to Bank of America Global Research, which has a $125 price target, Micron Technology will likely continue to experience strong earnings momentum into the last quarter of 2021 and even into 2022 and 2023, catalyzed by a strong recovery in DRAM component prices, a type of random-access semiconductor memory.</p></p><br/><br/><h3>3. Pure Storage (PSTG)</h3><img src="https://static2.businessinsider.com/image/60f06b24bb790e0018207c64-400-300/3-pure-storage-pstg.jpg" alt="" /><p><p>Pure Storage is a developer of all-flash data storage hardware and software products.</p><p>With an average stock price target of $27.94 derived from 18 analysts, the stock had 53% upside from its price of $18.19 on Wednesday. </p><p>Stifel, with a $25 price target, says Pure Storage is giving clear indications of increasing on-premises spending by customers, and positive commentary from Pure Storage channel partners' recent reports.</p></p><br/><br/><h3>4. RingCentral (RNG)</h3><img src="https://static6.businessinsider.com/image/60f06bedd1026600182c5be0-400-300/4-ringcentral-rng.jpg" alt="" /><p><p>The provider of cloud-based communications traded near $294.81 on Wednesday. Its stock, based on an average price target of $422.46 from 24 analysts, had as much as 43% upside. </p><p>Additional filters the website provides is "hyper growth", which is stocks that are estimated to grow revenue by at least 50%. And, "profit machines", which are stocks that are estimated to grow earnings by at least 50%.</p><p>According to Truist Securities, an investment banking advisory firm with a $525 price target on the company, RingCentral represents a sustained 30% plus software grower for a decade or more. The firm's bullish stance is further supported by a disciplined growth profile that entails profit and cash flow growth on a consistent basis.</p></p><br/><br/>
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