Benzinga Launches March Madness Stock Competition: What Companies Are The No. 1 Seeds And The Top Matchups?

Benzinga has launched a “Bulls vs. Bears” March Madness competition to find out which stock will take home top honors by fan vote.

What Happened: Coinciding with the 2022 NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament, Benzinga is offering fans the chance to vote for their favorite stocks in a seeded battle of 64 teams to narrow the field down to a Sweet Sixteen, Elite Eight and Final Four until one champion is crowned.

The stocks are seeded 1 to 16 in four different regions representing themes of electric vehicles, technology, health care and WallStreetBets favorites.

The voting dates for the matchups are:

• Round 1: March 15-18
• Round 2: March 19-22
• Round 3: March 23-26
• Quarter-Finals: March 27-30
• Semi-Finals: March 31-April 3
• Championship: April 4-8

Users are asked to select “Bull or Bear” for the two stocks in each matchup to pick a winner to move onto the next round. The most bullish stock in each matchup will move on to the next round.

The winning stock will be announced on April 11.

The Matchups: The 64 stocks selected by Benzinga fit the designated themes and are well-known publicly traded companies.

The No. 1 seeds are:

• Electric vehicles: Tesla Inc (NASDAQ: TSLA)
• Technology: Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ: GOOG)(NASDAQ: GOOGL)
• Health Care: Pfizer Inc. (NYSE: PFE)
• WallStreetBets: GameStop Corp. (NYSE: GME)

Some fun first-round matchups include:

• No.1 seed GameStop versus No. 16 seed Robinhood Markets Inc (NASDAQ: HOOD)
• No. 8 seed Uber Technologies Inc (NYSE: UBER) versus LYFT Inc (NYSE: LYFT) for the battle of ride-share companies
• No. 4 seed Meta Platforms Inc (NASDAQ: FB) versus No. 3 seed Paypal Holdings Inc (NASDAQ: PYPL)
• No. 2 seed Ford Motor Company (NYSE: F) versus No. 15 seed Nikola Corp (NASDAQ: NKLA)

The real fun could come in the later rounds when a potential battle in the EV region could be waged between Tesla, Ford and General Motors Company (NYSE: GM), the top three seeds, respectively, in the region.

The WallStreetBets region could come down to an exciting Elite Eight matchup between retail investors' favorites GameStop and AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc (NYSE: AMC), the top two seeds.

The technology region is loaded with favorites and some of the largest companies in the world including Alphabet, Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT) and Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN).

Follow along and submit your picks here.