Amazon Just Joined Goldman Sachs’ Conviction List: 5 New Top Stock Picks With Massive Upside

The Goldman Sachs Conviction List is a curated list of stocks that the firm’s research team believes are highly likely to outperform the market. It’s a tool for investors to identify stocks with strong growth potential, frequently updated to reflect changes in market conditions and company performance. The list aims to identify stocks where Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS | GS Price Prediction) analysts have the “highest level of conviction” in their outperformance. The list has focused on specific themes, such as artificial intelligence, consumer trends, and sustainability. The Conviction List offers investors a valuable perspective on the stock market, enabling them to identify potential investment opportunities.

Founded in 1869, Goldman Sachs is the world’s second-largest investment bank by revenue and ranks 32nd on the Fortune 500 list of the largest U.S. corporations by total revenue. The Wall Street white-glove giant offers financing, advisory services, risk distribution, and hedging to its institutional and corporate clients. We screen the firm’s Conviction List of top stock ideas each month, identifying new additions and removals.

For October, Goldman Sachs made some of the biggest portfolio changes we’ve seen in years. Goldman Sachs added five new companies and removed five.

Here are the five stocks that were removed from the Conviction List:

• Air Products and Chemicals (NYSE: APD)
• ConocoPhillips (NYSE:COP)
• Golar LNG (NASDAQ:GLNG)
• Loar (NYSE:LOAR)
• Tyson Foods (NYSE:TSN)

Why We Recommend Goldman Sachs Stocks

Goldman Sachs is the acknowledged leader in the investment landscape on Wall Street and worldwide. The firm’s top-notch research department continues to provide institutional and high-net-worth clients with the best ideas across the investment spectrum. It will likely continue to do so for years.

Here are the five new stock additions to the Conviction List for October, along with the analyst’s comments from the research report.

Amazon

Trading well below a 52-week high, this hyperscaler offers huge upside potential. Amazon.com (NASDAQ: AMZN) offers a variety of products and services to customers. Its stores offer merchandise and content it has purchased for resale, as well as products from third-party sellers.

Analyst Eric Sheridan said this:

The company is well positioned to produce a strong mix of compounded revenue growth and operating margin expansion on a multi-year horizon while continuing to make critical investments in long-term growth initiatives. Three growth drivers to focus on: (1) the AI revolution’s need for AMZN’s compute power; (2) operating leverage combined with cost optimization to drive eCommerce profitability; and (3) a still nascent but growing advertising platform.

The company’s segments include North America, International, and Amazon Web Services (AWS). It serves consumers through its online and physical stores and focuses on selection, price, and convenience. Customers access its offerings through its websites, mobile apps, Alexa devices, streaming, and in-store visits. Amazon also manufactures and sells electronic devices and produces media content. The devices include:

• Kindle
• Fire tablet
• Fire TV
• Echo
• Ring
• Blink
• eero

It serves developers and enterprises of all sizes, including start-ups, government agencies, and academic institutions, through AWS, which offers on-demand technology services, including compute, storage, database, analytics, machine learning, and more.

The Goldman Sachs target price is a stunning $375. That would represent a 51% upside.

Burlington Stores

Buying this popular retailer in front of the holiday season could be an outstanding move. Burlington Stores (NYSE:BURL) is an off-price retailer of branded merchandise at everyday low prices.

Goldman analyst Brooke Roach noted this:

The company’s idiosyncratic topline drivers combined with self-help initiatives to boost margins in the years ahead. Look for continued strong store growth combined with steady 3%+ same-store-sales growth to drive a consistent 10%+ topline trajectory through 2028. Also look for continued EBIT margin improvement as the company progresses toward its long-term ~10% operating margin target, supported by supply chain productivity, occupancy savings, and other cost efficiencies.

The company’s stores offer an extensive selection of in-season, fashion-focused merchandise, including women’s ready-to-wear apparel, menswear, youth apparel, baby, beauty, footwear, accessories, home, toys, gifts, and coats. Its broad selection offers apparel, accessories, and furnishings for all ages.

Burlington Stores sells a broad selection of merchandise acquired directly from manufacturers and other suppliers. It has six distribution centers:

• The three East Coast distribution centers are located in Edgewater Park, New Jersey; Burlington, New Jersey; and Logan, New Jersey.
• The West Coast distribution centers are in San Bernardino, California; Redlands, California; and Riverside, California.

These six distribution centers total 5,135,000 square feet, and each includes processing, shipping, and storage capabilities. It operates in about 1,108 stores.

Goldman Sachs set a $382 target price, a strong 43% gain from current levels.

Huntington Ingalls

This defense giant is a strong idea as the U.S. Navy continues to grow and is re-added to the Conviction List. Huntington Ingalls Industries (NYSE: HII) is a global, all-domain defense partner, building and delivering naval ships and technologies.

Goldman Sachs analyst Noah Poponak said this about the company:

Huntington Ingalls is a pure US Navy Shipbuilder as the Pentagon and US government continue to focus on the domestic shipbuilding base. Labor and supply chain investments from the DoW are now paying off, with Shipbuilding revenues +15-20% for four consecutive quarters and translating to higher margins, with contract tailwinds as well. Poponak models HSD% shipbuilding growth, several points of margin expansion, and better free cash generation over the medium term.

Its Newport News Shipbuilding segment includes all of its nuclear ship design, construction, overhaul, refueling, and repair and maintenance businesses. The Ingalls Shipbuilding segment includes its non-nuclear ship design, construction, repair, and maintenance businesses.

The Mission Technologies segment provides a range of services and products, including command, control, computers, communications, cyber, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance systems and operations; the application of artificial intelligence and machine learning to battlefield decisions; defense and offensive cyberspace strategies and electronic warfare; unmanned autonomous systems; live, virtual, and constructive training solutions; platform modernization, and critical nuclear operations.

Goldman Sachs set a $439 target price, representing a 64% gain for investors.

Johnson Controls

This company is a major player in the global data center buildout. Johnson Controls International (NYSE: JCI) is a global technology company. It specializes in energy efficiency, decarbonization, thermal management, and mission-critical performance, which helps customers use energy more productively, reduce carbon emissions, and operate with the precision and resilience required in expanding industries such as data centers, healthcare, and advanced manufacturing.

Goldman Sachs analyst Joe Ritchie noted this:

The company is in the early stages of a dual top- and bottom-line transformation poised to drive consistent, highly visible earnings growth, a >500bps improvement in adjusted operating margins, and more than double EPS through 2028. Now led by CEO Joakim Weidemanis – whose prior 13-year executive experience at Danaher is increasingly visible in the rollout of a proprietary business system — JCI is executing a structural shift from a cyclical commercial construction company to a mission-critical thermal management platform. This continuous-improvement operating model is already unlocking tangible gains in manufacturing throughput, innovation velocity, customer-facing time, and cash conversion. Simultaneously, JCI’s AI-driven data center cooling business is scaling rapidly, with organic order growth exceeding 30% for 3 consecutive quarters and pushing the total backlog to a record $21 bn (up 32% organically in F3Q26). As these dynamics play out, Ritchie believes FY27 organic revenue growth can accelerate into the LDD-MT% range, significantly outperforming management’s longer-term HSD% framework and current consensus expectations.

It engineers, manufactures, commissions, and retrofits building products and systems, including commercial heating, ventilating, and air-conditioning (HVAC) equipment, industrial refrigeration systems, controls, and security systems. It serves customers by providing technical services, including maintenance, management, repair, retrofit, and replacement of equipment, as well as energy-management consulting.

Johnson Controls also offers the OpenBlue digital ecosystem to optimize real-time airflow in buildings based on occupancy for customers across industries.

Goldman Sachs has set a $191 target price, a $28% gain from current trading levels.

Occidental Petroleum

This stock is a major position in Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway and offers outstanding energy-sector exposure. Occidental Petroleum (NYSE: OXY) is an international energy company with assets primarily in the United States, the Middle East, and North Africa.

Goldman Sachs Neil Mehta had this to say about the stock:

The company is using advanced recovery techniques to extend the life of depleting shale oil reserves while ramping up its focus on capital efficiency and deleveraging under new leadership that arrived in March. Advanced recovery efforts could add 2 billion barrels of oil equivalent (BBOE) to OXY’s reserves. And cost containment initiatives could also drive as much as $4bn of incremental cash flow by 2030. Look for excess cash to be returned to shareholders through a rising dividend or opportunistic buybacks.

The company is an oil and gas producer in the United States, including the Permian and D.J. basins and the offshore Gulf of Mexico. It operates through two segments:

• The Oil and Gas segment explores for, develops, and produces oil (which includes condensate), natural gas liquids (NGL), and natural gas.
• The Midstream and Marketing segment purchases, markets, gathers, processes, transports, and stores oil (which includes condensate), NGL, natural gas, carbon dioxide (CO2), and power. This segment also provides flow assurance and maximizes the value of its oil and gas.

Occidental Petroleum also optimizes its transportation and storage capacity and invests in entities that conduct similar activities.

Goldman Sachs’ $69 target price would be a solid 25% gain.

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