Investors interested in Consumer Discretionary stocks should always be looking to find the best-performing companies in the group. Has Sony been one of those stocks this year? Let's take a closer look at the stock's year-to-date performance to find out.

Sony is one of 258 companies in the Consumer Discretionary group. The Consumer Discretionary group currently sits at #11 within the Zacks Sector Rank. The Zacks Sector Rank considers 16 different groups, measuring the average Zacks Rank of the individual stocks within the sector to gauge the strength of each group.

The Zacks Rank is a successful stock-picking model that emphasizes earnings estimates and estimate revisions. The system highlights a number of different stocks that could be poised to outperform the broader market over the next one to three months. SNE is currently sporting a Zacks Rank of #2 (Buy).

Over the past 90 days, the Zacks Consensus Estimate for SNE's full-year earnings has moved 9.94% higher. This means that analyst sentiment is stronger and the stock's earnings outlook is improving.

According to our latest data, SNE has moved about 13.04% on a year-to-date basis. Meanwhile, the Consumer Discretionary sector has returned an average of -1.16% on a year-to-date basis. This means that Sony is outperforming the sector as a whole this year.

To break things down more, SNE belongs to the Audio Video Production industry, a group that includes 6 individual companies and currently sits at #108 in the Zacks Industry Rank. On average, stocks in this group have gained 7.70% this year, meaning that SNE is performing better in terms of year-to-date returns.

SNE will likely be looking to continue its solid performance, so investors interested in Consumer Discretionary stocks should continue to pay close attention to the company.