Looking to diversify my IRA a bit more and not be in ETFs so much. Curious as to what stocks folks are keeping an eye on and/or buying now and why.

There are some restaurant brands that are on the decline, and inevitably will shut down, if you're adventurous.

Qualcomm att and Coke I am watching right now.   I wish att had dropped to 36 but didn't happen.

FNF - they are going to split out another company - so it will be unlocking some value in the third quarter.

Red

i've just re-read your quote above for the 7th time and i still can't figure out what you are trying to do.

you want to "diversify your IRA" away from ETFs but next you are asking about what individual stocks folks are buying?
you do realize that in general an individual stock will have more risk than (for example) an ETF built to track the S&P500?
so how is going in that direction anything resembling "diversifying"?

perhaps you could start by telling us

1) what sort of ETFs you currently hold
2) what sort of performance you expect from your portfolio
3) what sort of risk you are willing to accept
4) what your current asset allocation is (stocks vs bonds vs cash)
5) what your age is

otherwise, without the above information folks here are just deer hunting in the dark.
and correspondingly, you will likely not get any value-added investment suggestions.  

ar-jedi

Oil stocks.

Do you plan on at least buying 25 stocks in varying sectors and market caps and then verifying their correlation?

I've been buying about 500 different stocks. Roughly twice a month. Fortunately, there's an easy way to group them together and buy them all at once.

VOO

Investing in well diversified funds at the moment.

Mainly stacking cash and waiting for the next recession

This was my exact thought too when reading his post.

OP - no offense but based on your opening comment and lack of financial sophistication, you are the perfect example of someone who should stick with ETFs and stay far, far away from investing in individual stocks. Unless you just like gambling...and losing.