Friday, September 19, 2025

The Zacks Research Daily presents the best research output of our analyst team. Today's Research Daily features new research reports on 16 major stocks, including Costco Wholesale Corp. (COST), Morgan Stanley (MS), and Caterpillar Inc. (CAT). 

These research reports have been hand-picked from the roughly 70 reports published by our analyst team today.

You can see all of today’s research reports here >>>

Ahead of Wall Street

The daily 'Ahead of Wall Street' article is a must-read for all investors who would like to be ready for that day's trading action. The article comes out before the market opens, attempting to make sense of that morning's economic releases and how they will affect that day's market action. You can read this article for free on our home page and can actually sign up there to get an email notification as this article comes out each morning.

You can read today's AWS here >>> A Late Summer Reflection on Growth, Inflation and Jobs

Today's Featured Research Reports

Costco’s shares have outperformed the Zacks Retail - Discount Stores industry over the past year (+5.0% vs. +4.0%). Being a consumer defensive stock, Costco has been surviving the market turmoil pretty well. The discount retailer’s key strengths are strategic investments, a customer-centric approach, merchandise initiatives, and an emphasis on membership growth. These factors have been helping it register decent sales and earnings numbers.

A favorable product mix, steady store traffic, pricing power, and strong liquidity position should help Costco keep outperforming. 

(You can read the full research report on Costco here >>>)

Shares of Morgan Stanley have outperformed the Zacks Financial - Investment Bank industry over the past year (+55.0% vs. +49.5%). The company's efforts to focus on wealth and asset management operations, its inorganic expansion efforts, strategic alliances, and relatively high interest rates are expected to aid its top line. The performance of the investment banking (IB) business is expected to be driven by a strong pipeline in the near term. 

However, operating expenses are likely to stay elevated due to business expansion efforts. The uncertainty of the performance of the capital markets is a key near-term concern for the company. 

(You can read the full research report on Morgan Stanley here >>>)

Caterpillar’s shares have outperformed the Zacks Manufacturing - Construction and Mining industry over the past year (+26.5% vs. +25.1%). Caterpillar’s Energy and Transportation segment has shown improved volume and margin performance in the past few quarters, helping offset weaker results in the Resource Industries and Construction Industries segments.

However, higher labor costs and the impact of tariffs on its margins are concerning. Going forward, the Construction Industries segment will gain from increased construction activities in the United States and globally. Resource Industries will be supported by commodity demand.

(You can read the full research report on Caterpillar here >>>)

Other noteworthy reports we are featuring today include CrowdStrike Holdings, Inc. (CRWD), Amgen Inc. (AMGN), and Sony Group Corp. (SONY).

Mark Vickery
Senior Editor

Note: Sheraz Mian heads the Zacks Equity Research department and is a well-regarded expert of aggregate earnings. He is frequently quoted in the print and electronic media and publishes the weekly Earnings Trends and Earnings Preview reports. If you want an email notification each time Sheraz publishes a new article, please click here>>>