GOLDMAN SACHS: These 20 unloved stocks are spring-loaded for surprisingly big gains in 2020

Brendan McDermid/Reuters

• Amid widespread bullishness around the stock market's prospects in 2020, Goldman Sachs' options strategists are flagging the possibility that certain individual stocks will vastly outperform expectations.
• They highlighted S&P 500 stocks where options-implied moves are lower than the upside suggested by fundamentals.
• They recommend buying call options on these names to profit from potential gains in the months ahead.
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The majority of top Wall Street firms have a bullish house view on stocks in 2020.

Despite the widespread optimism on the market as a whole, Goldman Sachs' options strategists are flagging the risk that investors may still leave money on the table in individual stocks.

Options traders are pricing in an implied upward or downward move of about 20% for the average S&P 500 stock, strategists led by John Marshall said in a client note. The bullish views are mostly expressed in contracts for energy and industrial stocks, while the consumer discretionary and utilities sectors are seen to have the most downside.

To investigate where the market is not bullish enough, Marshall and his team dug into the S&P 500 stocks that Goldman Sachs analysts rate as buys. They calculated the difference between options-implied moves over the next 12 months and their analysts' 12-month price targets.

They then filtered 20 stocks where the options market is pricing moves that are lower than Goldman's views.

"We recommend buying calls on these stocks to position for upside over the next year," Marshall said.

The list of stocks is presented below, ranked in increasing order of difference between Goldman's expected upside and the current options-implied move.

Get the latest Goldman Sachs stock price here.