Zacks.com Featured Highlights Include: Delek, Marathon Petroleum, Archer Daniels, Manitowoc And Phillips 66

 | Jun 18, 2018 10:31PM ET

For Immediate Release

Chicago, IL – June 19, 2018 - Stocks in this week’s article Delek US Holdings Inc. (NYSE:DK) , Marathon Petroleum Corp. (NYSE:MPC) , Archer Daniels Midland Co. (NYSE:ADM) , Manitowoc Company, Inc. (NYSE:MTW) and Phillips 66 (NYSE:PSX) .

5 Stocks Stealing the Limelight After Broker Rating Upgrades

While designing their portfolio, an investor may end up making a wrong choice. This can be due to a lack of expertise in identifying outperformers from a plethora of stocks on the market at any point of time.

Choice of improper stocks can adversely impact investors’ returns, thereby ruining the very objective of investing their hard-earned money in the highly unpredictable stock market. In a bid to avoid such a scenario, investors, more often than not rely on guidance from proper channels.

Broker Advice – The Savior

In the field of investing, brokers are deemed to be experts, equipped with thorough knowledge. Brokers, irrespective of their types (sell-side, buy-side or independent), have at their disposal a lot more information on a company and its prospects than individual investors.

They go through minute details of the publicly available financial documents apart from attending company conference calls and other presentations. Broker opinion should thus act as a valuable guide for investors while deciding on their course of action (buy, sell or hold) on a particular stock.

Be Guided by Earnings Estimate Revisions

Since brokers indulge in meticulous research, the question of their actions being arbitrary/out of the blue does not arise. The direction of estimate revisions serves as an important pointer regarding the price of a stock. In fact, a rating upgrade normally leads to stock price appreciation and vice versa.

Given the expertise of brokers in investment matters, it is natural for investors to believe that there is a solid reason/logic behind brokers improving their recommendation on a particular stock. In fact, a rating upgrade generally leads to stock price appreciation and vice versa. Estimates can move north for a number of reasons – favorable earnings performance, a bullish guidance, product launch or any favorable macro scenario.

To take care of the earnings performance, we have designed a screen based on improving analyst recommendation and upward estimate revisions over the last four weeks.

Revenues Performance – A Key Pointer

According to many market watchers, a revenue beat is more creditable for a company than a mere earnings outperformance, especially in an environment of revenue weakness due to macroeconomic headwinds like a strong dollar or lackluster demand for travel (which will hurt travel-focused companies). Therefore, one must take the top-line performance into consideration as well while formulating a winning strategy. We have included in our screen the price/sales ratio, which serves as a strong complementary valuation metric.

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

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