What Citi Expects From Alibaba (BABA) Before November 19 Farooq Sat, November 14, 2026 at 2:16 PM EST 4 min read BABA -0.70% ^GSPC -0.40% ^DJI +0.10% CL=F -0.20% ^IXIC -0.91% Trade BABA on Coinbase Trading disclosure Trading disclosure The above button links to Coinbase. Yahoo Finance is not a broker-dealer or investment adviser and does not offer securities or cryptocurrencies for sale or facilitate trading. Coinbase pays us for certain activity generated through this link. Prices displayed are informational.
We just published a list of the 10 Stocks With Insane Upside According to Reddit and Alibaba Group (NYSE:BABA) ranked 8th on this list.
US stocks edged lower Thursday, snapping a rebound that had lifted the S&P 500 1.3% a day earlier. The S&P 500 fell 0.35% to 7,592.40, the Dow Jones Industrial Average slipped 0.36% to 52,297.09, and the Nasdaq Composite lost 0.39% to 25,366.09, Yahoo Finance reported, as bond yields rose. Traders weighed hot inflation data, the Federal Reserve's next move and higher oil prices.
The week's moves have been shaped by interest rates. Tuesday's hotter-than-expected inflation report convinced traders that the Federal Reserve will raise rates next month, Reuters said. According to CME FedWatch, investors fully price in a hike of at least 25 basis points, with a 13.2% chance of a 50-basis-point move. Several Fed officials have said they are open to a more aggressive path, and Wall Street analysts have raised their forecasts for more and bigger hikes, Yahoo Finance said.
Wednesday's rebound showed how quickly sentiment can swing. The S&P 500 gained 1.3% and the Nasdaq Composite 1.6% after results from an AI cloud company eased worries about the durability of the artificial intelligence trade, Reutersreported, with advancing stocks outnumbering decliners by 1.3 to 1 on the NYSE. The Treasury market was closed for Veterans Day, so bond traders could react only on Thursday.
Thursday brought another pressure point. Oil prices climbed after the president said he was no longer interested in a deal with Iran, the Associated Press reported, which complicates the inflation outlook. Higher energy costs feed into the same inflation numbers the Fed is fighting. Even so, the S&P 500 finished with a modest loss and is up 2.9% for the week.
Retail investors are watching the same swings closely, and Reddit threads tend to cluster around names where the gap between price and analyst expectations looks widest. That gap deserves some care. An average price target is a twelve-month estimate pulled from sell-side analysts, it is often revised after earnings, and a handful of outliers can skew the mean. Because upside is measured against the current share price, a sharp drop widens it overnight, while a rally shrinks it just as fast. Readers who follow that chatter can browse our list of undervalued stocks to buy according to Reddit. You may also want to read our ranking of oversold AI stocks where Wall Street analysts are spotting 50%-plus upside.
With inflation, the Fed and AI spending all in play, the stocks below sit where the debate is loudest, and each one carries an average analyst target well above its recent price.
Alibaba made it to our list because it has an average upside potential of 98% and a market cap of $234.74 billion. Alibaba reports September-quarter results on November 18, and analysts have been raising cloud forecasts into the print. Citi analyst Alicia Yap kept her Buy rating and lifted her price target to $193 from $190, expecting cloud revenue to grow 52% to RMB 60.5 billion and a cloud margin of 12.5%, up from her earlier 12%. Morgan Stanley's Gary Yu kept an Overweight rating and a $180 target last month and left Alibaba as a Top Pick.
Investors like the cloud growth. Alibaba, a Chinese e-commerce and cloud company, saw external cloud revenue rise 45% in the June quarter, but heavy spending on AI and quick commerce cut its fiscal 2026 normalized earnings per ADS by 59%, Yahoo Finance reported. The shares fell 36.9% in the 12 months to November 11.
The stock dropped about 7% Thursday as a reported US rule to block China's remote access to AI chips weighed on Chinese AI shares. Alibaba has also filed to spin off its T-Head chip design unit for a Hong Kong IPO, according to DigiTimes. The report is the next test of whether cloud growth can outrun the AI losses.
While we acknowledge the risk and potential of BABA as an investment, we believe certain AI stocks offer greater upside potential and carry less downside risk. If you're looking for an extremely undervalued AI stock that also stands to benefit significantly from Trump-era tariffs and the onshoring trend, see our free report on the best short-term AI stock.
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