Biggest S&P Est Increases

When you invest in a stock, one of the best things you can see is analysts raising their expectations about what the company is going to earn for the current fiscal year. There are several ways of measuring this, but the following is a list of the companies with the biggest increases in their consensus earnings expectations for this year over the last month.

To make the list, a company had to have a current mean (average) estimate of over 50 cents, be a member of the S&P 500 and have at least three estimates for this year. The 50-cent restriction was put in to prevent small dollar changes that are huge percentage moves from dominating the list (going from a penny expected to a nickel). Having 3 or more estimates also helps insure it was not a fluke. The S&P 500 restriction was put in to make sure we are dealing with substantial companies.

Most likely these firms either reported much better than expected earnings, or communicated better times coming in their conference calls to the analysts after earnings were announced. Notice that there are companies from a wide variety of industries on this list. Often the best strategy is to pick stocks where the overall level of expectations is low -- for example, where the expected earnings level for this year is well below last year’s level, but where the analysts are starting to think that things might just be bad, not a disaster. The low level of earnings causes the stock price to be depressed, and when the worst does not happen, the stock rebounds.

Also, a consensus estimate in motion tends to remain in motion (notice how for most of the firms the 12-week change is larger than the 4-week change). If the analysts have been raising their estimates, they are far more likely to continue raising them than turn the other direction and start cutting them. Having a large number of estimates moving in the same direction has also been useful in predicting which direction a stock is likely to go in the near future.

This list is a good starting point to investigate companies that might be worth investing in.

I will post a second list with the stocks with the biggest estimate cuts shortly, which if they are in your portfolio should be candidates for culling from the herd.

Company	Ticker	2009 Zacks Consensus	4-Week % Change	Positive Revisions	Negative Revisions	EPS Growth	P/E
Intl Paper	IP - Analyst Report	$0.60	400.00%	12	0	-70.30%	33.63
Fifth Third Bk	FITB - Analyst Report	$0.77	201.85%	14	0	135.12%	12.57
Hess Corp	HES - Analyst Report	$1.10	116.78%	7	1	-84.98%	49.8
Freept Mc Cop-B	FCX - Analyst Report	$2.59	69.00%	10	1	-62.19%	24.45
Western Digital	WDC - Analyst Report	$3.04	43.58%	11	0	19.56%	10.53
Caterpillar Inc	CAT - Analyst Report	$1.49	32.59%	14	1	-73.67%	32.07
Avery Dennison	AVY - Analyst Report	$1.78	27.18%	8	0	-41.76%	15.47
Franklin Resour	BEN - Analyst Report	$3.34	21.46%	13	1	-49.95%	28.23
Cameron Intl	CAM - Analyst Report	$2.22	19.04%	13	0	-17.01%	15.37
Apache Corp	APA - Analyst Report	$4.86	18.07%	14	1	-58.18%	17.93
Noble Energy	NBL - Analyst Report	$2.82	17.90%	12	1	-60.04%	21.44
Whirlpool Corp	WHR - Analyst Report	$3.89	17.30%	5	0	-29.24%	15.87
Texas Instrs	TXN - Analyst Report	$0.84	17.21%	25	1	-44.67%	28.66
Goldman Sachs	GS - Analyst Report	$15.25	16.74%	16	1	241.21%	10.73
Gannett Inc	GCI - Analyst Report	$1.53	15.69%	5	0	-57.54%	5.05
Wells Fargo-New	WFC - Analyst Report	$1.66	15.18%	17	2	120.93%	17.36
Expedia Inc	EXPE - Analyst Report	$1.13	14.97%	10	0	-1.67%	19.92
Jpmorgan Chase	JPM - Analyst Report	$1.61	14.76%	10	3	93.75%	26.34
Eastman Chem Co	EMN - Analyst Report	$2.89	14.07%	7	0	-35.83%	18.26
Coca-Cola Entrp	CCE - Analyst Report	$1.50	14.00%	7	0	13.26%	12.99
Intuitive Surg	ISRG - Analyst Report	$5.27	13.46%	12	0	2.95%	43.66
Black & Decker	BDK	$1.78	13.37%	9	0	-63.57%	23.25
Corning Inc	GLW - Analyst Report	$1.17	12.08%	13	0	-25.76%	14.54
Autonation Inc	AN - Analyst Report	$1.03	11.00%	6	1	2.73%	19.45
Whole Foods Mkt	WFMI	$0.85	10.93%	7	0	-19.98%	33.51
Radioshack Corp	RSH - Analyst Report	$1.53	10.41%	15	0	0.54%	10.6
Newell Rubbermd	NWL - Analyst Report	$1.26	10.23%	10	0	3.07%	11.02
Devon Energy	DVN - Analyst Report	$2.99	10.12%	10	2	-69.78%	21.31
T Rowe Price	TROW - Analyst Report	$1.42	9.91%	15	2	-22.13%	34.36
Pactiv Corp	PTV	$2.40	9.86%	8	0	37.20%	10.82
Iron Mountain	IRM - Analyst Report	$0.94	9.75%	6	0	25.04%	31.46
3M Co	MMM - Analyst Report	$4.19	9.32%	16	0	-18.74%	17.39
Fmc Tech Inc	FTI - Analyst Report	$2.60	9.23%	10	0	-4.26%	16.76
Invesco Ltd	IVZ - Analyst Report	$0.70	8.84%	13	2	-46.52%	29.51
Cf Indus Hldgs	CF - Analyst Report	$7.60	8.75%	4	1	-47.29%	10.98
Amerisourcebrgn	ABC - Analyst Report	$1.77	8.47%	13	1	22.54%	11.49
Tjx Cos Inc New	TJX - Analyst Report	$2.36	8.29%	14	0	17.45%	15.03
Mylan Inc	MYL - Analyst Report	$1.16	8.05%	14	0	45.00%	11.37

Read the full analyst report on IP

Read the full analyst report on FITB

Read the full analyst report on HES

Read the full analyst report on FCX

Read the full analyst report on WDC