Zacks.com Featured Highlights Include: CVS Health, Asbury Automotive, Anixter International, Cincinnati Bell And AmerisourceBergen

For Immediate Release

Chicago, IL –August 30, 2019 - Stocks in this week’s article are CVS Health (NYSE:CVS) , Asbury Automotive Group (NYSE:ABG) , Anixter International (NYSE:AXE) , Cincinnati Bell (NYSE:CBB) and AmerisourceBergen (NYSE:ABC) .

Recent Broker Rating Upgrades Add Lustre to These 5 Stocks

Investors, while putting their hard-earned money into a stock, obviously expect handsome returns. However, in view of the uncertainties associated with the investment world and the huge number of stocks flooding the market, the task of designing a winning portfolio becomes daunting, particularly in the absence of proper know-how/expertise.

In fact, lack of proper guidance often causes one to falter in life. This is true for the investing world as well. Moreover, with time at a premium these days, it is next to impossible for investors to keep track of market movements to identify opportune moment(s) for buying or offloading a particular stock to maximize returns. Therefore, guidance from proper channels is a must.

Time for Some Broker Advice

The experts in the investing world are brokers. Generally, three types of brokers (sell-side, buy-side and independent) are present in the investment world, with sell-side analysts being the most common. They are employed by various brokerage firms to provide unbiased opinion to investors on the stocks under their coverage after thorough research. Buy-side analysts are employed by hedge funds, mutual funds etc. while the independent ones simply sell their reports to investors.

All types of brokers indulge in thorough research of the stocks under their coverage. They have access to much detailed information on a company. Toward this end, they attend company conference calls/presentations and scrutinize every detail available publicly before advising investors. Naturally, broker advice acts as an invaluable guide for investors in their bid to garner the maximum from their portfolios.

Direction of Earnings Estimates: An Invaluable Guide

Since brokers meticulously follow the stocks in their coverage, they revise their earnings estimates after carefully examining the pros and cons of an event for the concerned company. The estimate revisions serve as an important pointer regarding the price of a stock.

For example, an earnings outperformance by a company generally leads to upward estimate revisions with prices moving north. Similarly, lackluster earnings often lead to stock price depreciation. Investors tend to be guided by the direction of estimate revisions and stock price while formulating their investment strategy.

Making the Most of Broker Guidance

The above write-up clearly suggests that by following broker actions, one can arrive at a winning portfolio of stocks. Keeping this in mind, we have designed a screen to shortlist stocks based on improving analyst recommendation and upward revisions in earnings estimates over the last four weeks.

Also, since the price/sales ratio is a strong complementary valuation metric in the presence of analyst information, it has been included. The abovementioned ratio takes care of the company’s top line, making the strategy effective.

For the rest of this Screen of the Week article please visit Zacks.com at:Zacks Investment Research

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Written By: Zacks Investment Research