How I Made $5000 in the Stock Market

Bill Nygren Isn’t Worried About Market Volatility. He Likes GM, Delta, and Capital One Stocks.

Nov 20, 2025 14:07:00 -0500 by Paul R. La Monica | #Value Investing

Oakmark’s Bill Nygren says that many of the stocks he owns in various funds, including Delta Air Lines, are trading at price/earnings ratios in the single digits. (ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS/AFP/Getty Images)

Key Points

Bill Nygren isn’t worried about the recent market volatility. The Oakmark Fund manager and chief investment officer of the U.S. for Harris Oakmark thinks now is still a great time to be hunting for value stocks. And there are actually plenty around…more than you might think.

“The last two weeks haven’t changed things,” Nygren said Thursday at a media breakfast in New York for Oakmark’s parent company, Natixis Investment Managers, referring to the market’s recent stock pullback. Tech stocks tumbled Thursday despite strong earnings from Nvidia but they rebounded Friday. “We look for names that have been left behind.”

Along those lines, Nygren said there are numerous stocks in the S&P 500 trading for below 15 times earnings estimates. The S&P 500, by way of comparison, is trading at 22 times earnings forecasts for 2026.

In fact, Nygren said that several stocks he owns in various Oakmark mutual funds, as well as the nearly year-old exchange-traded fund, are trading at price/earnings ratios in the single digits, including General Motors, Delta Air Lines, and Charter Communications. Another stock he’s bullish on, Capital One, trades for just 10 times 2026 earnings estimates.

Nygren said he’s also not concerned about some of the recent worries about credit quality that have been impacting banks in the wake of the bankruptcy of subprime auto lender Tricolor and auto parts company First Brands. JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon has referred to the possibility of more bad loans in the system and compared the problems to “cockroaches.”

But Nygren pointed out that, while this might be an issue for smaller regional banks, it’s not an issue for the larger, well-capitalized banks that he owns. In addition to Capital One, the Oakmark ETF has sizable stakes in Bank of America, Citigroup, State Street, and Wells Fargo.

And although Oakmark’s funds are relatively light on tech stocks, Nygren isn’t shunning them entirely. Alphabet is a top holding in the ETF, which also owns Salesforce. Both stocks are relatively inexpensive compared to other megacap techs: Salesforce trades for 18 times earnings estimates for 2026, while Alphabet’s forward P/E ratio is 26.

Still, another fund manager at the Natixis event said that investors should continue to embrace the tech and artificial-intelligence trade. The bull run for the Magnificent Seven might not be over yet.

“We embrace volatility. Risks are always there,” said Hollie Briggs, head of global product management for the growth equity strategies team at Loomis, Sayles & Company. “So does a downturn in AI mean that AI is over? And our answer is no.”

To that end, the Natixis Loomis Sayles Focused Growth ETF owns shares of every stock in the Magnificent Seven except for Apple. It also has stakes in top momentum techs such as Netflix and Oracle.

The other key to investing during tumultuous times? Don’t get trigger-happy and sell because of headlines. Nygren said most of the stocks he owns have been in his funds for several years. And Briggs has an even longer-term horizon. She said that various mutual funds managed by the Loomis Sayles Growth Equity Strategies Team have owned top tech stocks for an average of about 14 years. Amazon has been a core holding since 2006, she said.

To put that in perspective, George W. Bush was president and Ben Bernanke was in his first year as chairman of the Federal Reserve. That’s investing for the really long haul.

Write to Paul R. La Monica at paul.lamonica@barrons.com