The 15 Most-Watched Drillers

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 drilling industry, watch interest is the percentage of people keeping an eye on drilling 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 industry has been recovering from the BP crisis in the Gulf of Mexico which halted drilling for nearly 6 months.

The most-watched drilling stock is ...
Looking at the aggregate data, we see that Transocean (NYSE: RIG) is above the rest in terms of watch interest and for good reason. As CAPS player nunguam wrote in June:

Earnings estimates indicate a profit of $4.51 per share for 2011, and $6.35 for 2012. [Transocean] shares have dropped with the market and over continued concerns from their involvement in the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

However, in the long run, Transocean will benefit from increased demand for their offshore rigs all over the world due to higher demand for oil. Transocean pays a dividend of about 90 cents per share which is equivalent to a 1.3% yield.

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.

Sources: Motley Fool, Motley Fool CAPS.

Whether you're keeping an eye on the industry stalwarts like SeaDrill or are watching an up-and-comer like Hercul es Offshore, 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.