The Basic Materials group has plenty of great stocks, but investors should always be looking for companies that are outperforming their peers. Has Arconic been one of those stocks this year? Let's take a closer look at the stock's year-to-date performance to find out.

Arconic is one of 247 individual stocks in the Basic Materials sector. Collectively, these companies sit at #14 in the Zacks Sector Rank. The Zacks Sector Rank gauges the strength of our 16 individual sector groups by measuring the average Zacks Rank of the individual stocks within the groups.

The Zacks Rank is a proven model that highlights a variety of stocks with the right characteristics to outperform the market over the next one to three months. The system emphasizes earnings estimate revisions and favors companies with improving earnings outlooks. ARNC is currently sporting a Zacks Rank of #1 (Strong Buy).

Within the past quarter, the Zacks Consensus Estimate for ARNC's full-year earnings has moved 9.82% higher. This is a sign of improving analyst sentiment and a positive earnings outlook trend.

Based on the most recent data, ARNC has returned 43.53% so far this year. At the same time, Basic Materials stocks have gained an average of 4.12%. As we can see, Arconic is performing better than its sector in the calendar year.

To break things down more, ARNC belongs to the Mining - Non Ferrous industry, a group that includes 11 individual companies and currently sits at #95 in the Zacks Industry Rank. On average, stocks in this group have gained 7.69% this year, meaning that ARNC is performing better in terms of year-to-date returns.

Investors in the Basic Materials sector will want to keep a close eye on ARNC as it attempts to continue its solid performance.