For new and old investors, taking full advantage of the stock market and investing with confidence are common goals. Zacks Premium provides lots of different ways to do both.
The popular research service can help you become a smarter, more self-assured investor, giving you access to daily updates of the Zacks Rank and Zacks Industry Rank, the Zacks #1 Rank List, Equity Research reports, and Premium stock screens.
Zacks Premium includes access to the Zacks Style Scores as well.
What are the Zacks Style Scores?
The Zacks Style Scores, developed alongside the Zacks Rank, are complementary indicators that rate stocks based on three widely-followed investing methodologies; they also help investors pick stocks with the best chances of beating the market over the next 30 days.
Based on their value, growth, and momentum characteristics, each stock is assigned a rating of A, B, C, D, or F. The better the score, the better chance the stock will outperform; an A is better than a B, a B is better than a C, and so on.
The Style Scores are broken down into four categories:
Value Score
For value investors, it’s all about finding good stocks at good prices, and discovering which companies are trading under their true value before the broader market catches on. The Value Style Score utilizes ratios like P/E, PEG, Price/Sales, Price/Cash Flow, and a host of other multiples to help pick out the most attractive and discounted stocks.
Growth Score
Growth investors, on the other hand, are more concerned with a company’s financial strength and health, and its future outlook. The Growth Style Score examines things like projected and historic earnings, sales, and cash flow to find stocks that will experience sustainable growth over time.
Momentum Score
Momentum trading is all about taking advantage of upward or downward trends in a stock’s price or earnings outlook, and these investors live by the saying “the trend is your friend.” The Momentum Style Score can pinpoint good times to build a position in a stock, using factors like one-week price change and the monthly percentage change in earnings estimates.
VGM Score
If you like to use all three kinds of investing, then the VGM Score is for you. It’s a combination of all Style Scores, and is an important indicator to use with the Zacks Rank. The VGM Score rates each stock on their shared weighted styles, narrowing down the companies with the most attractive value, best growth forecast, and most promising momentum.
How Style Scores Work with the Zacks Rank
The Zacks Rank is a proprietary stock-rating model that harnesses the power of earnings estimate revisions, or changes to a company’s earnings expectations, to help investors build a successful portfolio.
It’s highly successful, with #1 (Strong Buy) stocks producing an unmatched +25.41% average annual return since 1988. That’s more than double the S&P 500. But because of the large number of stocks we rate, there are over 200 companies with a Strong Buy rank, plus another 600 with a #2 (Buy) rank, on any given day.
But it can feel overwhelming to pick the right stocks for you and your investing goals with over 800 top-rated stocks to choose from.
That’s where the Style Scores come in.
You want to make sure you’re buying stocks with the highest likelihood of success, and to do that, you’ll need to pick stocks with a Zacks Rank #1 or #2 that also have Style Scores of A or B. If you like a stock that only as a #3 (Hold) rank, it should also have Scores of A or B to guarantee as much upside potential as possible.
The direction of a stock’s earnings estimate revisions should always be a key factor when choosing which stocks to buy, since the Scores were created to work together with the Zacks Rank.
For instance, a stock with a #4 (Sell) or #5 (Strong Sell) rating, even one that boasts Scores of A and B, still has a downward-trending earnings forecast, and a much greater likelihood its share price will decline as well.
Thus, the more stocks you own with a #1 or #2 Rank and Scores of A or B, the better.
Stock to Watch: MercadoLibre (MELI)
Buenos Aires, Argentina based MercadoLibre, Inc. is one of the largest e-commerce platforms in Latin America. The company is a market leader in e-commerce in Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, Chile, Ecuador, Costa Rica, Peru, Mexico, Venezuela and Uruguay based on unique visitors and page views.
MELI is a #3 (Hold) on the Zacks Rank, with a VGM Score of A.
Additionally, the company could be a top pick for growth investors. MELI has a Growth Style Score of A, forecasting year-over-year earnings growth of 4525% for the current fiscal year.
Three analysts revised their earnings estimate upwards in the last 60 days for fiscal 2021. The Zacks Consensus Estimate has increased $0.80 to $3.54 per share. MELI boasts an average earnings surprise of 281.7%.
With a solid Zacks Rank and top-tier Growth and VGM Style Scores, MELI should be on investors’ short list.
Tech IPOs With Massive Profit Potential
In the past few years, many popular platforms and like Uber and Airbnb finally made their way to the public markets. But the biggest paydays came from lesser-known names.
For example, electric carmaker X Peng shot up +299.4% in just 2 months. Think of it this way…
If you had put $5,000 into XPEV at its IPO in September 2020, you could have cashed out with $19,970 in November.
With record amounts of cash flooding into IPOs and a record-setting stock market, this year’s lineup could be even more lucrative.
See Zacks Hottest Tech IPOs Now >>
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