I love bargain stocks, especially when they're hitting 52-week lows. Still, it can be instructive to also look at stocks that are riding high.

For one thing, they can make good sell candidates. More optimistically, we may be able to find a few companies that can continue their upward climbs.

In this series, I'll be searching industry by industry for stocks reaching 52-week highs. That way, we'll be able to make a few quick comparisons among semi-related companies.

There are 24 industry groups as defined by the Global Industry Classification Standard. Insurance is one of them.

Below are the top seven companies in this space (by market cap) that are within spitting distance of their 52-week highs.

Company

Recent Price

52-Week Low

52-Week High

Price-to-Tangible-Book Ratio

Aflac (NYSE: AFL)

$55.25

$39.90

$56.56

2.6

Travelers (NYSE: TRV)

$55.59

$47.40

$55.90

1.1

ACE Limited (NYSE: ACE)

$60.72

$47.10

$61.09

1.2

Allstate (NYSE: ALL)

$33.11

$26.90

$35.51

1.0

Chubb (NYSE: CB)

$58.23

$47.10

$59.18

1.2

Aviva (NYSE: AV)

$6.31

$4.57

$6.91

1.5

Loews (NYSE: L)

$39.65

$30.20

$40.30

1.0

Source: Capital IQ, a division of Standard & Poor's and Yahoo! Finance.

Despite being near 52-week highs, many of these stocks are selling for close to their tangible book values (i.e., the amount of equity on their books minus intangibles like goodwill -- it's basically a more stringent book value).

The outlier is Aflac, a company I admire. When its CEO, Dan Amos, came by Fool HQ, he made three points that put Aflac on my radar screen. The question is whether the quality I perceive is worth the current price. Personally, I'm staying on the sidelines for now, but Aflac is definitely a company worth exploring further.

If you are interested in reading more about Aflac, add it to My Watchlist to find all of our Foolish analysis on them.

For a list of the insurance stock 52-week lows, click here.