Introduction, by John Butler

Here at Southbank Investment Research we’re becoming increasingly cautious in our outlook for global stock markets. The Fleet Street Letter investment director Eoin Treacy has recently placed stop losses across the entire portfolio.

In my recently launched service, Southbank Wealth Advantage, I’ve constructed a defensive, “Slowdown”-specified portfolio of 15 FTSE 100 companies but I’m anticipating a rotation into a full-blown “Recession”-specified portfolio in the coming weeks.

While caution is warranted, however, that only makes it all the more important that we identify companies that we nevertheless believe have potential to perform well. The alternative is to passively accept low or possibly even negative returns, especially when taking inflation into account. That’s not an attractive proposition.

And so I recently tasked all Southbank contributors to select one stock not currently on their buy lists that they believe could be a strong outperformer next year. What follows, in no particular order, are six picks from the six of us. I hope you find at least one of these ideas as compelling as I do (especially my own!).

And so, here we go: