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 systems design industry, watch interest is the percentage of people keeping an eye on systems design 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 curb by finding hot stocks that you might have otherwise overlooked. The industry has doing well with the growing acceptance and use of cloud computing around the world.
The most-watched systems design stock is...
Looking at the aggregate data, we see that VMware (NYSE: VMW) is above the rest in terms of watch interest, the percentage of people keeping an eye on systems design stocks in general who are specifically watching each company. And for good reason. As CAPS player LyfordJr wrote two weeks ago:
Virtualization is the future. We've reached the point where any processor is going to be underutilized most of the time, and the age of utility computing is approaching. VMware is already there, waiting for everyone else to arrive...
Here are the rest of the top 10 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 |
VMware |
$44,046 |
*** |
57.0% |
|
2 |
TeleCommunication Systems (Nasdaq: TSYS) |
$290 |
**** |
10.3% |
|
3 |
NetSuite (NYSE: N) |
$2,817 |
** |
8.3% |
|
4 |
Rovi (Nasdaq: ROVI) |
$6,617 |
** |
5.9% |
|
5 |
Mentor Graphics (Nasdaq: MENT) |
$1,431 |
*** |
2.8% |
|
6 |
Sourcefire (Nasdaq: FIRE) |
$872 |
**** |
2.6% |
|
7 |
NICE Systems (Nasdaq: NICE) |
$2,394 |
***** |
2.5% |
|
8 |
China TransInfo Technology |
$86 |
** |
2.0% |
|
9 |
Falconstor Software (Nasdaq: FALC) |
$212 |
*** |
1.4% |
|
10 |
MICROS Systems (Nasdaq: MCRS) |
$4,190 |
*** |
1.2% |
Source: Motley Fool, Motley Fool CAPS.
Whether you're keeping an eye on the industry stalwarts like VMware or are watching an up-and-comer like Sourcefire, 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.
