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Buy offense and defense in the face of uncertainty, says Stephanie Link

Key Points
  • "Buying balance" is a strategy to use during times of uncertainty, says Stephanie Link, Head of Global Equities Research at Nuveen and "Halftime Report" trader. 
  • She added to Aptiv and GE on the offense side, and Chevron and Verizon on the defense side.
  • "I do think there's value out there and you cannot ignore when stocks get hit so hard," she said of her strategy to buy any dips.

Even on the bad days, Stephanie Link of Nuveen is buying. On Friday's "Halftime Report," she called the strategy "buying balance" and advocated for a mix of offensive and defensive stocks.

On the offense side, Link added to Aptiv and GE. She described Aptiv as "an industry leader in the auto parts sector" that is presenting a big opportunity since "it's down 17% from its high and it trades at 14 times earnings."

Meanwhile, GE is a "turnaround story" for Link. "It's led by a very strong leader… They have mis-executed for so many years… There's so much low hanging fruit there that you don't necessarily need the power business, which is a big part of the business and a big part of the company, you don't really need that to recover," she analyzed. Since she made the call on "Halftime Report" to buy GE on January 29, the stock has gone up 19%.

On the defensive side, Link added to Chevron and Verizon, a pair of stocks that both yield 4%. Other pluses that Link highlighted about Chevron were its "great balance sheet," its "buying back $5 billion of stock this year and next," and its "buying back $5 billion of stock this year and next." She sensed opportunity in Verizon too because it is trading at "12 times forward estimates."

Link's Bullish Case for Chevron

  • "Great balance sheet."
  • "Buying back $5 billion of stock this year and next."
  • "Fabulous management team."

What isn't fitting into the "buying balance" strategy? Link is trimming her holdings in L3 Technologies and Alphabet. Though she called L3, the aerospace and defense company that is about to enter a $34 billion merger with Harris, a "great company" that is "up almost 40% on the year," she concluded that "it's time to take the chips off."

She had less warm feelings towards Alphabet. "I was so upset by that quarter. Now you have regulation on top of that quarter, and then they're probably going to do a cloud acquisition on top of that?" In fact, she now prefers Facebook, which she pointed out was trading at the same multiple.

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In the face of so much uncertainty, Link is holding steady to this strategy of buying on the dips. "I don't know which way trade is going to go, I don't know which way the Fed is going to go," Link said. "But I do think there's value out there and you cannot ignore when stocks get hit so hard."

Disclosure: Stephanie Link owns shares of Alphabet, Aptiv, Chevron Corporation, General Electric, L3 Technologies and Verizon Wireless.