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 telecom industry, watch interest is the percentage of people keeping an eye on telecom stocks in general who are specifically watching each company. By looking at what stocks people are most interested in within an industry, you can get ahead of the curve by finding hot stocks that you might have otherwise overlooked.

The most-watched telecom stock is ...
Looking at the aggregate data, we see that AT&T (NYSE: T) is above the rest in terms of watch interest, and for good reason. As CAPS player michael3214 wrote last month: "More smart phone usage-especially data and video will drive revenue across all networks. With a global fiber network and wireless component, this company is in a position to take advantage of economies of scale in its fiber networks to move data and information cheaply -- or at a price point that allows a higher profit per data bit sent thus increasing margins and revenues."

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

Rank

Company

Market Cap (Millions)

CAPS Rating (out of 5)

Watch Interest

1 AT&T $174,788 *** 22.4%
2 Verizon Communications (NYSE: VZ) $101,831 **** 19.9%
3 Frontier Communications (NYSE: FTR) $7,156 *** 7.8%
4 CenturyLink (NYSE: CTL) $21,310 *** 7.6%
5 Level 3 Communications (Nasdaq: LVLT) $3,766 *** 5.6%
6 Windstream (NYSE: WIN) $6,089 *** 3.7%
7 Telefonica (NYSE: TEF) $68,173 ***** 3.5%
8 8x8 (Nasdaq: EGHT) $245 *** 3.2%
9 Vonage Holdings (NYSE: VG) $803 * 3.1%
10 France Telecom (NYSE: FTE) $36,614 **** 2.4%
11 Telecom Corp. of New Zealand (NYSE: NZT) $4,401 ***** 1.8%
12 Neutral Tandem (Nasdaq: TNDM) $523 ***** 1.5%
13 Alaska Communications Systems (Nasdaq: ALSK) $346 **** 1.4%
14 Boingo Wireless (Nasdaq: WIFI) $313 *** 1.3%
15 BCE (NYSE: BCE) $29,040 **** 1.0%

Sources: The Motley Fool, Motley Fool CAPS.

Whether you're keeping an eye on the industry stalwarts like AT&T or are watching an up-and-comer like 8x8, it pays to watch. We can help you keep tabs on your companies with My Watchlist, our free, personalized stock-tracking service. Get started now!