It doesn’t matter if you’re a growth, value, income, or momentum-focused investor — building a successful investment portfolio takes skill, research, and a little bit of luck.
But how do you find the right combination of stocks? Funding your retirement, your kids’ college tuition, or your short- and long-term savings goals certainly requires significant returns.
Enter the Zacks Rank.
What is the Zacks Rank?
The Zacks Rank is a unique, proprietary stock-rating model that utilizes earnings estimate revisions to help investors build a winning portfolio.
There are four main factors behind the Zacks Rank: Agreement, Magnitude, Upside, and Surprise.
Agreement is the extent to which all brokerage analysts are revising their earnings estimates in the same direction. The greater the percentage of analysts revising their estimates higher, the better chance the stock will outperform.
Magnitude is the size of the recent change in the consensus estimate for the current and next fiscal years.
Upside is the difference between the most accurate estimate, which is calculated by Zacks, and the consensus estimate.
Surprise is made up of a company’s last few quarters’ earnings per share surprises; companies with a positive earnings surprise are more likely to beat expectations in the future.
These four factors are assigned a raw score that’s recalculated every night, which is then compiled into the ranking system. Stocks are classified into five groups using this data, ranging from “Strong Buy” to “Strong Sell.”
The Power of Institutional Investors
The Zacks Rank also allows individual investors, or retail investors, to benefit from the power of institutional investors.
These professionals manage the trillions of dollars invested in hedge funds, mutual funds, and investment banks, and studies have shown that they can and do move the market because of the large amounts of money they invest with. Thus, the market tends to move in the same direction as institutional investors.
In order to figure out the fair value of a company and its shares, these investors will build valuation models focused on earnings and earnings expectations. Because if you raise estimates for the bottom line, it creates a higher fair value for a company.
With these changes, institutional investors will act, usually buying stocks with rising estimates and selling those with falling estimates. An increase in earnings expectations can potentially lead to higher stock prices and bigger gains for the investor.
Since it can often take weeks, if not months, for an institutional investor to build a position (given their size), retail investors who get in at the first sign of upward earnings estimate revisions have a distinct advantage over these larger investors, and can benefit from the expected institutional buying that will follow.
Not only can the Zacks Rank help you take advantage of trends in earnings estimate revisions, but it can also provide a way to get into stocks that are highly sought after by professionals.
How to Invest with the Zacks Rank
The Zacks Rank is known for transforming investment portfolios. In fact, a portfolio of Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy) stocks has beaten the market in 26 of the last 32 years, with an average annual return of +25.41%.
Moreover, stocks with a new #1 (Strong Buy) ranking have some of the biggest profit potential, while those that fell to a #4 (Sell) or #5 (Strong Sell) have some of the worst.
Let’s take a look at
Teck Resources Ltd (TECK)
, which was added to the Zacks Rank #1 list on February 9, 2022.
Vancouver, Canada-based Teck Resources Limited is a diversified resource company committed to mining and mineral development with business units focused on steelmaking coal, copper, zinc and energy.
Two analysts revised their earnings estimate higher in the last 60 days for fiscal 2021, while the Zacks Consensus Estimate has increased -$0.07 to $4.40 per share. TECK also boasts an average earnings surprise of 17.4%.
Analysts are expecting earnings to grow 464.1% for the current fiscal year, with revenue forecasted to rise 61.5%.
Even more impressive, TECK has gained in value over the past four weeks, up 7.2% compared to the S&P 500’s loss of 6.3%.
Bottom Line
With a #1 (Strong Buy) ranking, positive trend in earnings estimate revisions, and strong market momentum, Teck Resources Ltd should be on investors’ shortlist.
If you want even more information on the Zacks Ranks, or one of our many other investing strategies, check out the
Zacks Education home page
.
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