JPMorgan Adds Five New Overweight Stock Picks to Its October Ideas List

The Five New Additions

JPMorgan has refreshed its list of favorite stock ideas for October, and every one of the five new names carries an overweight rating from the bank's analysts. American Express, Liberty Energy and Thermo Fisher Scientific headline the additions, which the bank files under four strategies: growth, income, value and short. American Express is the most contested of the three. The card issuer's shares closed at $302.78 on Friday, October 2, down 18.16% year to date according to Google Finance data, as doubts over consumer spending and volatile credit costs weighed on the name. Analyst Richard Shane still backs it. “AXP remains a core holding for investors looking for industry leading high returns and disciplined return of capital (dividend plus repurchases 3% of shares year after year),” he stated. Liberty Energy, a growth pick, has climbed 52% over the past year on the strength of its Liberty Power Innovations unit, which builds on-site generation for large power users. That unit agreed in January to supply up to 1 gigawatt of power to Vantage Data Centers within 5 years, a deal documented in the company's investor-relations disclosure. Analyst Arun Jayaram expects the demand to keep building: in a note to clients he described a “reinforced structurally tight behind-the-meter power backdrop tied to data center load growth,” with a power deficit expected to persist into 2030 and a “multi-year demand runway for distributed generation providers.” Thermo Fisher Scientific, the second growth pick, closed at $654.80 on October 2, up 13% year to date and more than 25% over the past 3 months. In September, Mayo Clinic launched Precure, an early disease detection venture, with Thermo Fisher as a founding partner. Analyst Casey Woodring sees further gains from wider AI adoption and US biopharma reshoring.

October's Seasonal Edge

The refresh lands after a split September on Wall Street. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 4.3% last month, the S&P 500 slipped 0.5% and the Nasdaq Composite gained 1.9%, leaving the third quarter with the Dow down 3% while the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq each advanced at least 2% over the period. September has long been the weakest month for US stocks, and the timing of the update matters. Seasonality data in a Barchart post dated September 30, the last trading day of the month, put the average total return for the SPDR S&P 500 ETF at 2.27% in October since 2010. That ranks third among all 12 calendar months, behind November at 3.09% and July at 2.79%, while September averaged a 0.48% loss over the same stretch. The bank refreshes the list monthly and sorts every overweight-rated stock into growth, income, value and short strategies, so the new names are the cleanest public read on where its analysts see fresh value. The composition leans toward the themes the quarter's tape already paid. Power supply tied to data center load growth and diagnostics with an AI angle kept the Nasdaq ahead of the Dow through September, and the growth picks are positioned for that divergence to continue rather than close. Liberty Energy's contract book runs on multi-year data center demand, and Thermo Fisher's venture with Mayo Clinic is a structural bet rather than a one-quarter story. American Express is the counterweight, a value name priced for consumer caution at an 18.16% year-to-date discount.

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Power Deficit Into 2030

Our reading is that the October list is a barbell rather than a momentum bet. The value entry prices consumer caution, while both growth picks are levered to a behind-the-meter power deficit that the bank's own client note expects to persist into 2030, a dated trigger no seasonal pattern carries. For traders who take equity exposure through stock perpetuals, the risk-on tilt that lifted the Nasdaq 1.9% in September typically prints as a firmer funding rate on those books; a reversal would be the first sign the seasonal bid is not holding. The 1 gigawatt Liberty contract gives the power thesis a measurable anchor.