General Electric: What To Look For In 2018

Summary Points:

*GE's shares have underperformed the broader market by a wide margin so far in 2017.

*I will cover the three things that I will be looking for in 2018, as GE's management team tries to win back the market.

*GE is a long-term buy at today's price.

General Electric ($GE) is a company that I have closely followed since 2014, and it would be an understatement to say that the stock performance for this storied industrial conglomerate has been a major disappointment in 2017. So far this year, GE shares have underperformed the broader market by 63 percentage points.

There is no denying the fact that GE's new CEO, Mr. John Flannery, has his hands full as we head into 2018, but, in my opinion, there are three things that management can do to improve investor sentiment over the next 12 months. Therefore, I believe that investors with a time horizon longer than one to three years should seriously consider hanging onto their shares.