We recently published a list of 10 Best Retirement Stocks to Buy According to Hedge Funds. In this article, we are going to take a look at where UnitedHealth Group Incorporated (NYSE:UNH) stands against other best retirement stocks to buy according to hedge funds.

After much suspense, the US Federal Reserve finally began cutting interest rates in late 2024, dropping the federal funds rate by 75 basis points in two cuts in September and November, with the market expecting further cuts this year. The Fed’s decision came in reaction to falling US inflation and employment market statistics, which suggested that the elusive soft landing was still within reach. However, as February comes to a close, things appear to have changed. For the time being, the Federal Open Market Committee is projected to leave interest rates unchanged on March 19. That’s because the labor market looks to be strong, and inflation is still over goal and slightly increasing. The FOMC’s most recent meeting in January also said that “respondents generally judged that policy rate reductions would occur later than previously assessed,” implying that any reduction (if at all) will occur sometime later in 2025.

According to the Census Bureau, the 65-and-older population in the United States will grow from 58 million in 2022 to 82 million by 2050, when it is expected to account for more than a quarter of the total population. The World Economic Forum further predicts that half of kids born in the United States in 2007 would survive to the age of 103. As such, wages seem to be falling behind inflation as people live longer lives. That’s especially true now that businesses have moved the burden of retirement savings to employees, giving 401(k)s instead of pensions that promise a fixed income each month.

One dilemma many face as they approach retirement is how much money they will need to live comfortably when they stop working. According to Consumer Expenditure Surveys, the average retiree household in the United States spends around $5,000 per month. With a median 401(k) balance of $210,724 for those aged 60 to 69, implementing the 4% withdrawal rule yields around $702 per month—which, when combined with the average monthly Social Security payment of $1,976, still falls short of meeting basic needs. According to Dan Doonan, executive director of the National Institute on Retirement Security, non-wealthy workers still have insufficient retirement coverage, forcing them to save on their own:

“In general, we’re just asking way too much of individuals to get all this right. And saving during the middle years of your life to provide income throughout retirement, it really is a challenging endeavor.”

Conversely, Doonan believes that a more streamlined network of retirement schemes across the country can help private-sector companies reduce employee turnover. In addition, Congress has already taken its own steps, passing laws like the Secure 2.0 Act of 2022, which alters federal retirement plan rules with the purpose of boosting access. According to Doonan, these revisions may encourage more employees to save in accounts similar to pensions.

In addition, retirees should monitor the equities market, which soared in 2023 and 2024, propelled by technology companies and optimism about AI-related advancements. According to FactSet statistics, the S&P 500 is predicted to expand by double digits this year, at a rate of 14.8%. This would outperform the trailing 10-year average of 8% profit growth. Furthermore, this strong performance may prove to be more significant than the Fed’s interest rate forecast. Regarding this, Garrett Melson, portfolio strategist at Natixis Investment Managers in Boston, said the following:

“While we anticipate 2025 is likely to be more volatile than the remarkably low volatility environment of 2024, the fundamentals remain supportive for both equities and fixed-income assets. And it’s those fundamentals that matter more for the outlook than the exact number of cuts.”

Our Methodology

For our list of the best retirement stocks, we used stock screeners, ETFs, and online rankings to find large companies with low beta values, a history of reliable dividend payments, and well-established businesses. These equities were then rated using hedge fund sentiment from Insider Monkey’s Q4 2024 database.

Why are we interested in the stocks that hedge funds pile into? The reason is simple: our research has shown that we can outperform the market by imitating the top stock picks of the best hedge funds. Our quarterly newsletter’s strategy selects 14 small-cap and large-cap stocks every quarter and has returned 373.4% since May 2014, beating its benchmark by 218 percentage points (see more details here).

A senior healthcare professional giving advice to a patient in a clinic.

UnitedHealth Group Incorporated (NYSE:UNH)

Beta Value: 0.61

Dividend Yield: 1.80%

Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 150

UnitedHealth Group Incorporated (NYSE:UNH), headquartered in Minnetonka, Minnesota, is a major US multinational company that specializes in managed healthcare and insurance services. The company is a for-profit entity with four primary segments: UnitedHealthcare, Optum Health, Optum Insight, and Optum Rx. UNH began paying yearly dividends back in 1990 and transitioned to quarterly distributions in 2010, with the dividend steadily growing since then. Last year, it returned more than $16 billion to stockholders in dividends and share repurchases.

On February 21, RBC Capital Markets maintained an Outperform rating on UnitedHealth Group Incorporated (NYSE:UNH) with a $655 price target. UnitedHealth Group’s stock has been under examination since the release of an unsubstantiated report, which sparked a significant pre-market reaction among investors. Despite this, RBC Capital’s analysts believe that the consequences of this investigation will take longer to emerge, comparable to the DOJ’s antitrust investigation last year.’

Bretton Fund stated the following regarding UnitedHealth Group Incorporated (NYSE:UNH) in its Q4 2024 investor letter:

“We invest in UnitedHealth Group Incorporated (NYSE:UNH) because we believe this revealed preference is real. The regulatory landscape changes constantly, there is plenty of noise in the system, and it is possible to imagine a world where health insurers would not be necessary. However, the massive healthcare system we’re in today structurally relies on private companies to play the crucial role of managing care and negotiating prices, and we don’t think the US government is prepared to take all that over. It was a bad year for our investment, as the stock returned a negative 2.4%, but it trades for a meaningful discount to the market despite consistently delivering double digit earnings growth for years, including 10% last year.

First, the elephant in the room. On December 4, Brian Thompson, who ran UnitedHealth’s insurance business, was assassinated in New York City. Shell casings had the words “deny” and “depose” written on them, a bullet was inscribed with “delay.” Five days later, Luigi Mangione was arrested in Pennsylvania with what appears to be the murder weapon and a manifesto criticizing the American healthcare system. Mangione has since become a cult celebrity.

Healthcare is not a normal market. Governments have decided that healthcare is worth intervening in to achieve noneconomic outcomes, most notably providing care for people who can’t afford it. Each country’s regulatory system designs its system and rations healthcare in its own way: the UK employs providers directly and attempts a central triage function to allocate care; continental European systems typically have private providers but some version of all-payer rate setting; and the US has a decentralized model where providers can charge whatever they want, but payers can choose not to pay it, plus government-run systems like Medicare and Medicaid that cover about 35% of Americans. Every system implements some type of brake on costs, usually a combination of the government and private companies, and the US system leans more on the private sector for this than others. Our system is not without its benefits. It is vastly more lucrative for providers like surgeons and medical device companies. It also allows for some measure of money signal; if you are a rich weekend warrior with an orthopedic issue, the American system will offer a dizzying array of cutting-edge specialists where the UK would suggest getting used to the feeling of aging and stiffening one’s upper lip. However, our system violates the social expectation of the word “insurance…” (Click here to read the full text)

Overall, UNH ranks 1st on our list of best retirement stocks to buy according to hedge funds. While we acknowledge the potential of UNH as an investment, our conviction lies in the belief that certain AI stocks hold greater promise for delivering higher returns, and doing so within a shorter time frame. If you are looking for an AI stock that is more promising than UNH but that trades at less than 5 times its earnings, check out our report about the cheapest AI stock.

READ NEXT: 20 Best AI Stocks To Buy Now and Complete List of 59 AI Companies Under $2 Billion in Market Cap

Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.