9 of the best stocks to buy in a sell-off

Ally Selby: And I'm Ally Selby. And if there's one thing I've learned in markets in recent years, it's that you need a wishlist of stocks ready to go when and if sentiment swings and the market hits a new low.

James Marlay: So in this video, we've asked 12 of Australia's finest fund managers to share the stock that they would love to own if only it went on sale.

Ally Selby: Is there a stock on your wishlist that you would buy at a cheaper price?

#1. REA Group (ASX: REA)

Now, I don't think it's a perfect company. I think you could probably run it with half the OPEX that they do. I don't know why they keep going offshore and blowing themselves up every few years. But apart from that, I think it's very high quality, and we own it vicariously through News Corp (ASX: NWS), which owns over 60% of it. 

#2. Hermès (EPA: RMS)

Bob Desmond: It's actually Hermès. If you look at that landscape, luxury goods, there's probably four companies that just sit at the top there. We own LVMH (EPA: MC). So Louis Vuitton and Dior sit up there, but Chanel and Hermès would be the other two. I have followed Hermès for 23 years. I've never owned it. In fact, I've never bought their products. So not only are the products too expensive for me, but the shares have just never got to where we'd be comfortable owning. But I think it's an amazing business, with family ownership, a great brand, and it's under the radar. That's probably one we'd love to own one day.

#3. Pro Medicus (ASX: PME)

Joel Fleming: Pro Medicus has been a fantastic contributor to our portfolio for a very, very long time. We're no longer in the stock, but the more that we look at it, we just continue to see that the opportunities grow for that business. They're going to be at the forefront of AI and the way things are changing. And that's one in a pullback that you would love to be able to buy.

#4. Manhattan Associates (NYSE: MANH)

Francyne Mu: I think one of the names, which we already hold in the portfolio, but I would not hesitate to add, would be Manhattan Associates. It's a company that provides warehouse management systems and the software to manage that for retailers, as well as supply chain and logistics companies. It's a great company with very strong momentum. They have re-engineered their product to be more cloud-based, and hence they've seen really good momentum, even despite the macro situation that is affecting some retailers out there. So if there was a sell-off in that name, I wouldn't hesitate to add.

#5. REA Group (ASX: REA)

Matthew Kidman: Well, the problem with stocks being a bit cheaper, is there's normally something wrong with them. But I'm assuming that the market drops and you get a chance to buy something cheaper because of the general environment. And I've said it before, but I think Australia's best domestic stock is REA, realestate.com as it used to be called. It has a 40% return on equity, it's the number one in its market, a good balance sheet, and several growth options offshore. And for the couple of times that the market has fallen in the last few years, COVID, the interest rate increases of recent times, we've bought REA and it's served us really well.

#6. Pro Medicus (ASX: PME)

Chris Stott: Pro Medicus. It's got a price-to-earnings ratio, or P/E, of over a hundred times. It's gone up from 70 cents to $90 a share in the last 10 years, so one of the most successful stocks on the ASX over the last 10 years. We'd love to buy that on a pullback. Great business in the software space, well run by Sam Hupert, terrific management team, with good skin in the game. So that's certainly one that we'd look to buy on a pullback.

#7. Ivanhoe Mines (TSE: IVN)

Daniel Sullivan: For a single name, we really like Ivanhoe Mines. Commodities like copper and lithium have a really good future. Clearly, lithium's been choppy and copper's been much more stable. But going forward, Ivanhoe is a very high-grade company with expansions and other projects. So that's got a lot of the elements that we really like about a company in the resource space.

#8. Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT)

Vihari Ross: So I'm going to actually pick a stock that we already own and that I'd love to load up more on if it sold off, and that's Microsoft. I think everyone knows the story. Cloud is in its infancy in terms of transition. We're only 20% of the way through workloads. They've got their network effects, they've got high switching costs in their enterprise customer base, and of course, they're now perfectly poised to monetize their AI investments as well. So if a stock like that were to have a wobble, that would be a time to buy even more of it.

#9. Mainfreight (NZX: MFT)

#11. Ferrari (NYSE: RACE)

Mary Manning: I love Ferrari. I've talked to you and Livewire about it before. It's a stock that we own in the portfolio. But if it ever sold off, it's one that we would certainly add to. It's an extremely high-quality stock. It has amazing earnings visibility because the waitlist to get a Ferrari is over two years. So in this environment, where for certain sectors and certain stocks there's not a lot of earnings visibility, to have a stock like Ferrari, where you can see two years into the future, is like gold. So I'd still really like Ferrari.

#12. REA Group (ASX: REA)

Matthew Haupt: Yeah. I mean, the one that stands out is REA. A great, great company, with mid-50s EBITDA margins. So incredibly profitable, but it always looks expensive. You get moments, even last year or early this year, it flashed down to around $100. And now we're trading $150 to $160 at the moment. So again, it's a great company, but just looks always expensive. But you do get short moments when it comes down. But that's one that I'd be looking at.

Which stock would you buy if it ever sold off?