The 15 Most-Watched Electric Utilities Stocks

People watch stocks for different reasons -- they're waiting for a dip in price, watching for a specific catalyst, gathering all the news and information that might affect stocks they already own, or considering a sell. Regardless of their motivation, we can better understand market sentiment by seeing who's watching what. With the Fool's free My Watchlist service, we have tens of thousands of people telling us the businesses that have, for whatever reason, piqued their interest.

With this data we have come up with a new metric, watch interest, to inform investors what stocks their peers keep tabs on in each industry. In the case of the electric utilities industry, watch interest is the percentage of people keeping an eye on electric utilities stocks in general who are specifically watching each company. By looking at what stocks people are most interested in an industry, you can get ahead of the curve by finding hot stocks that you might have otherwise overlooked.

The most-watched electric utilities stock is ...
Looking at the aggregate data, we see that Exelon (NYSE: EXC) is above the rest in terms of watch interest and for good reason. As CAPS player goqqq wrote in May:

In an era of concerns about global warming and rising commodity prices, Exelon maintains a position as the largest nuclear plant operator in the United States. Its ability to produce low-cost electricity with minimal greenhouse gas emissions should produce substantial growing shareholder value for many years.

Here are the rest of the 15 most-watched companies in the industry with their watch interest along with the stocks' CAPS rating to show the sentiment of our investing community.

Sources: Motley Fool, Motley Fool CAPS.

Whether you're keeping an eye on the industry stalwarts like Exelon or are watching an up-and-comer like Otter Tail, it pays to watch. We can help you keep tabs on your companies with My Watchlist, our free, personalized stock tracking service. Click here to start now.