Stock Ideas from Barron’s 1/5 Issue: SCHW, BABA, NVDA

This is my latest summary of stock ideas I drew from this week’s issue of Barron’s Magazine. I didn’t find many specific stock recommendations from the pages because some of the big articles were overviews about dividend paying stocks and international markets, and the official stock pick of Schwab seemed pretty lame to me.

SCHW. I really cannot endorse this week’s stock pick by Barron’s. It doesn’t make a very good case for investing in Schwab at this time. They point out that Schwab is coming back from a scandal involving paying little to no interest on customer sweep accounts, but the stock was already up 18% in 2025 and the stock is still pretty expensive. The article reads like an advertisement for Schwab, and Schwab is already a big advertiser in Barron’s. Coincidence?

BABA Alibaba is called out as a stock to buy in the article about international stocks. The case on BABA is based on the outsize earnings growth of international stocks esp emerging markets, their discount to US stock valuations, and China’s ability to go head to head with the US on AI innovation. Alibaba specifically has a full stack of AI assets to lead in AI, a load of cash, and they are the top cloud provider in China. BABA was up 75% in 2025, but still remains at a reasonable PE multiple of 18.

NVDA. Barron’s cites an analyst report recommending Nvidia as a buy. Specifically the analyst at Mizuho highlights the recent acquisition/license of Groq as a key one that will put Nvidia into a prime position to compete with Alphabet’s TPU on AI inference over the transition period from AI Training to Inference over the coming years. Price target of $245.