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 food products industry, watch interest is the percentage of people keeping an eye on food products 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 food products stock is...
Looking at the aggregate data, we see that Kraft Foods (NYSE: KFT) is above the rest in terms of watch interest and for good reason. As CAPS player ffbj wrote in May:

The apotheosis of a boring stock, but with a nice dividend, and decent performance, in a down turn KFT is hard to beat. It will never make you a lot of money but it's a steady eddy. Now with commodities falling KFT can go up a bit more.

Here are the rest of the top 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.

 

Company

Market Cap (millions)

CAPS Rating (out of 5)

Watch Interest

1

Kraft Foods

$60,295

****

22.4%

2

Green Mountain Coffee Roasters (Nasdaq: GMCR)

$16,982

*

19.9%

3

Archer Daniels Midland (NYSE: ADM)

$18,907

****

7.8%

4

General Mills (NYSE: GIS)

$23,673

****

7.6%

5

H.J. Heinz (NYSE: HNZ)

$16,635

****

5.6%

6

AgFeed Industries (Nasdaq: FEED)

$77

****

3.7%

7

Dean Foods (NYSE: DF)

$1,894

***

3.5%

8

Darling International (NYSE: DAR)

$1,963

*****

3.2%

9

Kellogg (NYSE: K)

$19,722

***

3.1%

10

ConAgra Foods (NYSE: CAG)

$10,303

*****

2.4%

11

J.M. Smucker (NYSE: SJM)

$8,669

****

1.8%

12

Hershey (NYSE: HSY)

$12,870

***

1.5%

13

McCormick (NYSE: MKC)

$6,312

*****

1.4%

14

Mead Johnson Nutrition (NYSE: MJN)

$14,370

***

1.3%

15

B&G Foods (NYSE: BGS)

$879

****

1.0%

Source: Motley Fool, Motley Fool CAPS.

Whether you're keeping an eye on the industry stalwarts like Kraft or are watching an up-and-comer like B&G Foods, 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.