Investment Group
The Most Loved and Hated S&P 500 Stocks (Bespoke)
Tuesday, August 14th, 2012
In our prior post, we highlighted which sectors the analyst community likes and loathes the most. Below we take a look at the individual stocks in the S&P 500 that have the highest percentage of buy and sell ratings. To make the list, the stock had to have coverage from at least 5 analysts.
As shown, SLM Corp (SLM) has the highest percentage of buy ratings at 100%. Every analyst covering SLM rates it a buy. Seven other stocks in the S&P 500 have at least 90% buy ratings — Agilent (A), Schlumberger (SLB), CVS (CVS), Allegheny Technologies (ATI), Covidien (COV), Fluor (FLR) and EMC (EMC). Apple (AAPL) is another name on the list that’s noteworthy. Of the analysts that cover Apple, 87.7% rate it a buy. The reason this is so impressive is because it has the highest analyst coverage of any stock out there at more than fifty. Qualcomm (QCOM) and Boeing (BA) are two other notables on the list of stocks that are the most loved by analysts.
Most of the stocks that are loved by analysts are up quite a bit in 2012, but there are two — Allegheny (ATI) and Peabody Energy (BTU) — that are down more than 30% year to date. It’s surprising that analysts are sticking with these two stock since they’ve done so poorly over the past seven months.
Receiving a buy rating is no big deal since “buys” make up a majority of analyst calls. Receiving a sell rating, on the other hand, stands out since only 5% or so of all calls are sells. Below are the S&P 500 stocks with the highest percentage of sell ratings. As shown, Sears Holdings (SHLD) owns the title of most hated stock in the S&P 500 with 85.7% sell ratings. Federated Investors (FII) ranks second at 66.7%, followed by Lexmark (LXK) at 58.3%. The rest of the stocks on the list have sell rating percentages below 40.
Interestingly, four of the six most hated stocks in the S&P 500 are having stellar years. The most loathed stock of all — Sears — is up a whopping 70.83% year to date, while FII is up 34.39%, Whirlpool (WHR) is up 50.33%, and Weyerhaeuser (WY) is up 26.41%.
Tags: Aapl, Allegheny Ati, Allegheny Technologies, Analyst Community, Analyst Coverage, Cov, Covidien, CVS, Federated Investors, Flr, Hated Stocks, Investment Group, Lxk, oil, Peabody Energy, QCOM, Schlumberger, Sears Holdings, Shld, Slb, Slm Corp
Posted in Markets | Comments Off
Sector Relative Strength: Defensives Topping
Friday, August 10th, 2012
The charts below show the relative strength of the ten S&P 500 sectors as well as the Dow Jones Transports and the Russell 2000 relative to the S&P 500 over the last year. When the line is rising it indicates that the sector is outperforming the S&P 500, while a falling line indicates underperformance. We have also shaded each sector in red or green to indicate whether the sector has outperformed (green) or underperformed (red) the S&P 500 over the last year.
As was the case the last time we looked at sector relative strength, over the last year six sectors have outperformed the S&P 500 while four have underperformed. One shift that we have seen in the last two weeks, however, is that some of the defensive sectors have started to underperform. Look at the charts below and you will see that Consumer Staples, Health Care, Telecom Services, and Utilities have all started to roll over to varying degrees. For Consumer Staples and Utilities, both sectors are close to dipping into the red in terms of relative performance over the last year. While defensives have seen slowing momentum, sectors picking up the slack include Energy, Industrials, and Technology.
Typically, when the market is in rally mode, you often see outperformance on the part of the Transports and Small Cap Stocks. In the current leg higher, however, both indices have been lagging, and both are underperfoming the S&P 500 by a considerable margin over the last year. In the case of the Russell 2000, the index has made a modest rebound over the last few days (post Knight Trading trade glitch), but it needs to string together another week or two of outperformance before we could confidently say that small caps are participating.
Copyright © Bespoke Investment Group
Tags: Amp, Consumer Staples, Dow Jones, Dow Jones Transports, Glitch, Industrials, Investment Group, Knight Trading, Last Time, Momentum, oil, Rally Mode, Rebound, Relative Performance, Relative Strength, Russell 2000, Sectors, Slack, Small Cap Stocks, Small Caps, Telecom Services
Posted in Markets | Comments Off
Default Risk Falls for US Banks and Brokers (Bespoke)
Tuesday, August 7th, 2012
Below are charts that show the change in default risk (5-year credit default swaps) over the past two and a half years for six of the most widely followed banks and brokers here in the US. Over the past week or so, these financial firms have seen a pretty big drop in default risk as their stock prices have moved higher.
Morgan Stanley (MS) still has the highest default risk at 322 bps, followed by Goldman Sachs (GS) at 247 bps. Bank of America (BAC) and Citigroup (C) are in the middle of the pack, while JP Morgan (JPM) and Wells Fargo (WFC) have the lowest default risk. Wells Fargo (WFC) is the only company with a 5-year CDS price below 100 bps, clearly establishing it as the “safest” of the big US financial firms.
Tags: Bac, Bank Of America, Banks, Bps, Citigroup, Citigroup C, Credit Default Swaps, Default Risk, Goldman Sachs, Investment Group, Jp Morgan, Jpm, Morgan Stanley, Sachs Gs, Stock Prices, Two And A Half Years, Wells Fargo, Wfc
Posted in Markets | Comments Off
Earnings, Revenue Beat Rates Remain the Same (Bespoke)
Sunday, August 5th, 2012
by Bespoke Investment Group
Since last Thursday, roughly 800 companies have reported earnings, which is nearly half of the total amount of reports we’ve seen since earnings season began on July 9th. While we’ve seen a ton of reports over the last week, the overall percentage of companies that have beaten both earnings and revenue estimates has stayed the same. As shown below, the earnings beat rate currently stands at 59.9%, which is just a tenth of a percent below where it was a week ago. The revenue beat rate is currently at 48.2%, which is a tenth of a percent above where it was a week ago.
The earnings beat rate has been right around 60% for six consecutive quarters now. The revenue beat rate, however, is well below its historical average this earnings season.
We’re now at the back end of the second quarter reporting period, so we don’t expect these readings to change much from here.
Copyright © Bespoke Investment Group
Tags: Consecutive Quarters, Copyright, Earnings Estimates, Earnings Season, Investment Group, Last Thursday, Nbsp, Revenue Estimates, Second Quarter
Posted in Markets | Comments Off
Dow 30 Trading Range Screen (Bespoke)
Monday, July 30th, 2012
This screen allows users to quickly identify which stocks in their portfolio have upside or downside momentum, and which ones may be getting overheated or deeply oversold. For the Dow, 16 of the 30 members are now in overbought territory, although just two (KO and WMT) are in extreme overbought territory. Just three Dow stocks are oversold — AA, CSCO and HPQ. Of these three, CSCO still has downside momentum, while AA has seen a pickup lately and may have more upside. Of the stocks in Neutral territory, American Express (AXP), Caterpillar (CAT) and IBM currently have the most upside momentum, while McDonald’s (MCD), Pfizer (PFE) and United Tech (UTX) have downside momentum.
Bespoke Premium Plus members have the ability to run their portfolios through a number of screens that we provide. One of these screens is our trading range screen, which allows clients to view where a large number of stocks are trading from an overbought/oversold perspective on one simple page. Below we have run the screen on the 30 stocks that make up the Dow Jones Industrial Average. For each stock, the light and dark green shading represents oversold territory, while the light and dark red shading represents overbought territory. The Neutral line represents the 50-day moving average. The dot for each stock shows where it is currently trading, while the tail shows where it was one week ago.
Become a Premium Plus member today to have Bespoke run your portfolio through our trading range screen!
Copyright © Bespoke Investment Group
Tags: American Express, Axp, Bespoke Investment Group, Caterpillar Cat, Csco, Dow 30, Dow Jones, Dow Jones Industrial Average, Dow Stocks, Hpq, Investment Group, Mcd, Momentum, Moving Average, Neutral Line, Neutral Territory, Pfe, Pfizer, Shading, United Tech, Wmt
Posted in Markets | Comments Off
Can it Really Be That Easy?
Monday, July 30th, 2012
Throughout the year in reports to our Bespoke Premium clients, we have highlighted the similarities between this year and prior Presidential Election years numerous times. Most recently, in early July we noted the fact that based on the historical pattern the S&P 500 could see a modest pullback in mid-July coinciding with the kick-off of earnings season. Sure enough, the market saw some choppiness about a week and a half ago and subsequently rebounded in the middle of last week. Holding to the historical pattern, that rebound came right at the same time that the market historically sees its summer low.
If the pattern continues, the S&P 500 could be set up for a nice rally to end the Summer. Will it hold? Only time will tell, but if the historical pattern has worked so far, what’s to stop it from continuing?
Tags: Amp, Choppiness, Earnings Season, Investment Group, Nbsp, Presidential Election, Pullback, Rally, Rebound
Posted in Markets | Comments Off
Sector Relative Strength – A Bullish Trend?
Friday, June 8th, 2012
The charts below show the relative strength of the ten S&P 500 sectors as well as the Dow Jones Transports relative to the S&P 500 over the last year. When the line is rising it indicates that the sector is outperforming the S&P 500, while a falling line indicates underperformance. We have also shaded each sector in red or green to indicate whether the sector has outperformed (green) or underperformed (red) the S&P 500 over the last year.
As shown in the chart, six sectors have outperformed the S&P 500 over the last year. Over the last twelve months, the S&P 500 has been led essentially by Consumer Discretionary, Technology, and Utilities, which have seen the greatest outperformance. On the downside, sectors that have been weighing on the market include Energy, Financials, Industrials, and Materials. Of these four sectors, the Materials sector has shown some signs of a bounce in recent days, but at this point we would need to see further outperformance before becoming more confident on the sector’s outlook.
With regards to the Dow Jones Transports, the sector has underperformed the S&P 500 over the last year, but in the last several weeks the sector’s relative strength has been slowly trending higher. This is no doubt due to the big drop in the price of oil, but for all you Dow theorists out there, it is a bullish trend.
Subscribe to Bespoke Premium to receive more in-depth research from Bespoke.
Copyright © Bespoke Investment Group
Tags: Amp, Bounce, Bullish Trend, Dow Jones, Downside, Industrials, Investment Group, Materials Sector, Nbsp, No Doubt, Outlook, Outperformance, Price Of Oil, Relative Strength, Sectors, Shaded Red, Signs, Theorists, Twelve Months
Posted in Markets | Comments Off
More Than Half of the S&P500 Yields More Than 10-Yr Treasury
Tuesday, May 22nd, 2012
With the 10-Year US Treasury now yielding 1.74%, it is now paying a coupon that is less than the dividend yield of more than half of the stocks in the S&P 500. As of today’s close, there are now 271 stocks in the S&P 500 that have a greater yield than the 10-Year US Treasury. Of the remaining 229 stocks in the index, 126 have a dividend yield that is less than the 10-Year US Treasury, while 103 pay no dividend at all.
Tags: 10 Year Treasury, Amp, Dividend Yield, Investment Group, Nbsp, P500, Stocks, Us Treasury
Posted in Markets | Comments Off
Key ETF Performance QTD and YTD
Tuesday, May 15th, 2012
The second quarter of 2012 has so far been a complete reversal of the first quarter. As of earlier this morning, just one stock-related ETF in our matrix below was up for the quarter — Utilities (XLU). Major US index ETFs are all down 4-5% for the quarter, while sectors like Energy (XLE) and Financials (XLF) are down 7%+.
International markets have done much worse than the US. Brazil (EWZ), France (EWQ), Germany (EWG), India (INP), Italy (EWI), Spain (EWP) and Russia (RSX) are all down double digit percentages since the start of April, and they’re down 5%+ over the last week alone. The only asset class that is solidly in the green for the quarter is fixed income, which many investors shunned like the plague as recently as March. Oh how quickly things change.
Tags: asset class, Brazil, Etf Performance, Ewg, Ewi, Ewp, Ewq, Ewz, First Quarter, Inp, International Markets, Investment Group, Percentages, Plague, Qtd, Rsx, Second Quarter, Sectors, Us Brazil, Xle, Xlf
Posted in Markets | Comments Off
Individual Investors Laughing All the Way to the Bank (Bespoke)
Friday, May 11th, 2012
Individual investors are often ridiculed as being the last to get into the market and the last to get out. However, looking at trends in bullish sentiment suggests that individual investors may not be the dopes that many institutional investors often classify them as. In this week’s survey of bullish sentiment from the American Association of Individual Investors (AAII), bullish sentiment dropped from 35.4% down to 25.4%. This puts bullish sentiment at the lowest level since September.
Looking at the chart below shows that bullish sentiment on the part of individual investors has been declining since February or about six weeks before the S&P 500 reached its peak. If this was just a one-time event, we could probably chalk up the decline in bullish sentiment ahead of the market peak as a coincidence. The reality, however, is that last year we saw the exact same pattern as bullish sentiment also declined ahead of the big drop in equities. The fact that individual investors have shown such good timing twice in a row now suggests that they deserve more credit than many have been giving them credit for. Perhaps they could even lend a hand to the Chief Investment Office of JP Morgan (JPM).
Tags: Ahead, American Association Of Individual Investors, Amp, Bullish Sentiment, Chart Below Shows, Chief Investment, Coincidence, Decline, Dopes, Institutional Investors, Investment Group, Investment Office, Jp Morgan, Jpm, Laughing All The Way, Laughing All The Way To The Bank, Market Peak, Nbsp, Six Weeks, Time Event
Posted in Markets | Comments Off
