Analysts on Wall Street are well known for rating far more stocks positively than negatively. They are also known for not providing an edge to those who follow their ratings. In fact, the stocks with the best average analyst ratings don’t actually outperform those with the worst. Given this, the stocks with the best and worst ratings can be a jumping point for finding stocks that may do worse than or better than expected.
The major sentiment surveys are sending mixed signals, but, on average, are showing a slightly high level of optimism. The AAII Bull ratio, at 74%, is showing the most optimism, but only because there is a low number of bearish investors and not because there is an overwhelming majority of bullish investors. The Investors Intelligence and NAAIM surveys are both showing sentiment levels right in the middle of their range.
Today, we added a major new feature to the individual stock page. While it’s still in beta, the new fundamental charts feature allows you to easily view the history of a stock’s financials going back ten years. We think this is very useful in forming an opinion on a stock based on data.
Not all of the indicators are available to everyone. Many of them are premium members only for now. While we would like to make all the indicators available to everyone, it isn’t economically possible for us to do so right now.
Because this is still in beta, it’s not complete yet. We’ll be adding more functionality and improving over the next couple weeks and months. Just a few of the additions we have planned are an expanded data set, embeddable charts, and an option to export the data.
We hope you like this new feature, and if you have any feedback, please let us know.
During the third quarter, the S&P 500 companies managed to make a new quarterly earnings record as well as break the record for trailing twelve month earnings. These results have been helped along by the high profit margins of the past couple of years. Whether the profit margins are sustainable or not, time will only tell, but for now, we can only look at past earnings. Below, we have some charts of the quarterly S&P 500 earnings broken down by sector.
If you’ve visited VectorGrader.com within the last couple days, you may have noticed several new features and updates, making our website better and easier to use.
By far, the largest improvement we made recently was on the page for a stock. We’ve added several new features, including a visual representation of our rating, a chart, and several graphics indicating the characteristics of the stock.
Another new feature we added was a box which shows search results as you type a ticker or company name in the form near the upper left corner of the page. Previously, you would have had to know the ticker to bring up the page for a stock you were looking for, but now, you can just start typing the company name.
The last addition to the website was some new REIT and MLP dividend yield charts to the indicators section. We hope these will be of use and will add perspective on more asset classes.
We also made a couple of minor changes with regard to the looks of the website, the most noticeable being the color scheme for the navigation bar. The previous green color was a bit overpowering and drew the eye away from the content of the page.
As always, we appreciate any input, feedback, or ideas for further improvement. If you have any thoughts, please let us know.
