My Three top picks from 1920 stocks on the NYSE

The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) traces its origins to May 17, 1792, when 24 stockbrokers gathered beneath a buttonwood tree on Wall Street in Manhattan.

They signed what became known as the Buttonwood Agreement, establishing the first organized stock market in New York City. From this humble beginning, the NYSE would eventually grow into the world’s largest stock exchange

There are just over 1920 stocks listed on the NYSE (New York Stock Exchange) not including the ETFs ETPs on the NYSE ARCA exchange. Here are three of my top NYSE stocks to invest in for 2025.

Antero Resources (AR)

An independent exploration and production company that specialises in natural gas and other liquids with the Appalachian basin. Antero Resources has a market cap of $12.59 billion and annual sales of $4.68 billion and it turns over 5.20 million shares on average each day.

The stock has rallied by more than +28.0% over the last month  and by 48.0% over the last quarter during which its posted 21 new highs. It outperformed the wider market by +55.0% over the last year and by almost 45.0% over the last three months.

Alaska Air (ALK)

Alaska Air will report earnings on January 23rd, the stock price  has underperformed larger  rivals like UAL and Delta in 2025 year to date  so it could be due to climb to a higher altitude.

Alaska Air completed the takeover of Hawaiian Airlines last year. An all stock deal valued at $1.90 billion. versus the current market cap of $8.42.0 billion.

Rated as a strong buy at 14 out of the 15 brokers that cover the stock, their consensus price target of $80.00 looks obtainable given the current positivity around US airlines right now. Alaska Air has out performed the wider market by 75.0% over 12 months and by +48.0% over the last 3 months.

Ciena Corp (CIEN)

Ciena Corp. is a leading provider of optical networking equipment, software and services. The company specialises in delivering global connectivity between data centres.

The data centre market is growing rapidly boosted by the demand for AI  and the capex budgets of mega cap tech companies. Citi  recently named Ciena as a top AI infrastructure pick. Ciena Corp. has a market cap of just over $12.0 billion and the stock trades an average of some 1.56 million shares on a daily basis.

Connecting data centres together is not as sexy as making the chips or servers that power the large language models that support AI bots. But that connectivity could become increasingly important as more businesses adopt AI tools in their mainstream activities, and want to be certain they can scale their operations seamlessly.

The stock currently trades just a couple of dollars below wall street’s price target of $88.53 but to my mind Ciena Corp  is under appreciated by the market the stock has outperformed the broad market by +40.74% over the last 12 months and +27.23% in the last quarter

Filtering the list

1920 names is a substantial number of issues to wade through. Luckily we don’t have to look at each one in minute detail. Because we can shorten the list dramatically by using some qualitative filters to help us identify the Best NYSE Stocks for 2025 .

When we are looking for the Best NYSE Stocks for 2025 we want to identify stocks which have upside potential. But they should also stand out from the crowd and be tradable in the best sense.

To that end I have looked for stocks with market cap greater than $3.0 billion, and which have an average daily volume of 500,000 shares or more.

500,000 is a bit of an arbitrary number, but it would allow 1000 people to trade in 500 shares of the stock, on any given day. Which to my mind is the minimum liquidity we should be looking for.

Furthermore, I have looked for stocks which have triggered technical or fundamental buy signals which are still valid and which have outperformed the wider market (S&P 500 over the last 12 months)

Outperformers

Using these filters I have whittled the list down to 142 names. In fact if we look for those that have outperformed over the last 3 months as well, we can cut the list down to 132 names

We can shorten the list further by excluding S&P 500 stocks, not least because we covered the Best S&P 500 stocks for 2025 in a separate article.

Having removed the S&P 500 constituents we are left with a list of 54 stocks drawn from 19 industries

However 54 stocks is still a bit of an unwieldy number.

So to make the list more manageable still  I have looked for those stocks that have outperformed the wider market by +20.0% or more, over both the 3-month and 1-year time frames.

Having applied the performance criteria, we are left with a selection of some 25 stocks drawn from.a range of sectors and industries.

Some will likely be familiar to you, though possibly for the wrong reasons, and here I am thinking about meme stocks GameStop (ticker GME)a nd Chewy (ticker CHWY).

Meme stocks tend to have returns and price volatility that’s unrelated to their underlying businesses.

So unless you are familiar with these stocks and their “unique ecosystem”, they might be best avoided.

There are a number of stocks that have outperformed the wider market by substantial margin over the last 12 months (1Y Outperformance %).

Top of the list is Quantum Computing business IONQ (ticker IONQ), this is an industry whose stock prices are almost completely driven by sentiment, and comments made by senior technology executives.

Once again it’s buyer beware, or at least eyes wide open.

Home Furnishings retailer Williams Sonoma (ticker WSM) is somewhat more staid. However it still managed to deliver a +71.0% outperformance over the last 12 months. Whilst names in Oil Field services and Integrated Oil sectors are benefiting from higher oil prices and the prospect of a new US government, that’s energy/fossil fuel friendly, when compared to the Biden administration.