The 15 Most-Watched Insurance 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 insurance industry, watch interest is the percentage of people keeping an eye on insurance 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 insurance stock is ...
Looking at the aggregate data, we see that Aflac (NYSE: AFL  ) is above the rest in terms of watch interest and for good reason. As CAPS player buckazoid wrote last month:

This company has taken a beating and the fundamentals are all right. Recurring revenue streams; focus on supplemental insurance rather than "traditional" health insurance and therefore a certain independence from major political change.

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.

	Company	Market Cap (in millions)	CAPS Rating (out of 5)	Watch Interest
1	Aflac	$19,490	*****	17.2%
2	American International Group (NYSE: AIG  )	$47,608	**	9.5%
3	Markel (NYSE: MKL  )	$3,708	*****	5.1%
4	Prudential Financial (NYSE: PRU  )	$26,239	***	4.7%
5	Willis Group (NYSE: WSH  )	$6,427	***	3.8%
6	Travelers (NYSE: TRV  )	$22,013	****	3.6%
7	MetLife (NYSE: MET  )	$38,440	***	3.4%
8	AmTrust Financial Services (Nasdaq: AFSI  )	$1,336	*****	2.8%
9	Cincinnati Financial (Nasdaq: CINF  )	$4,237	****	2.7%
10	Fidelity National Financial (NYSE: FNF  )	$3,501	****	2.7%
11	Hartford Financial Services Group (NYSE: HIG  )	$9,163	***	2.2%
12	Chubb (NYSE: CB  )	$17,047	****	2.1%
13	Allstate (NYSE: ALL  )	$13,582	***	2.0%
14	Genworth Financial (NYSE: GNW  )	$3,327	***	1.9%
15	Universal Insurance (AMEX: UVE  )	$164	****	1.7%

Sources: Motley Fool, Motley Fool CAPS.

Whether you're keeping an eye on the industry stalwarts like MetLife or are watching an up-and-comer like Universal Insurance, 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.