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 media industry, watch interest is the percentage of people keeping an eye on media 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 media stock is ...
Looking at the aggregate data, we see that Sirius XM Radio (Nasdaq: SIRI) is above the rest in terms of watch interest and for good reason. As CAPS player NanrekM wrote last month:
The continuing trend of new subscribers is likely to continue. During this tough economic time people still agreed that they were willing to pay to listen to Howard, Oprah, The Boss, and many other channel offerings. This stock is going to do the up and down roller coaster but will continue its' climb.
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 |
Sirius XM Radio |
$7,464 |
** |
25.9% |
|
2 |
Walt Disney (NYSE: DIS) |
$66,496 |
**** |
14.2% |
|
3 |
IMAX (Nasdaq: IMAX) |
$1,064 |
*** |
7.4% |
|
4 |
DreamWorks Animation SKG (NYSE: DWA) |
$1,641 |
**** |
4.0% |
|
5 |
Comcast (Nasdaq: CMCSA) |
$605,200 |
** |
3.4% |
|
6 |
Madison Square Garden (NYSE: MSG) |
$1,901 |
**** |
2.9% |
|
7 |
China MediaExpress (Nasdaq: CCME) |
$19 |
** |
2.8% |
|
8 |
Pandora Media (NYSE: P) |
$2,160 |
* |
2.3% |
|
9 |
Time Warner (NYSE: TWX) |
$33,161 |
** |
2.2% |
|
10 |
World Wrestling Entertainment (NYSE: WWE) |
$714 |
** |
1.9% |
|
11 |
DIRECTV (NYSE: DTV) |
$33,511 |
*** |
1.5% |
|
12 |
Morningstar (Nasdaq: MORN) |
$2,817 |
**** |
1.4% |
|
13 |
Dish Network (Nasdaq: DISH) |
$11,172 |
** |
1.4% |
|
14 |
Time Warner Cable (NYSE: TWC) |
$22,112 |
** |
1.4% |
|
15 |
Discovery Communications (Nasdaq: DISCK) |
$13,810 |
***** |
1.1% |
Sources: Motley Fool, Motley Fool CAPS.
Whether you're keeping an eye on the industry stalwarts like Disney or are watching an up-and-comer like Sirius XM, 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.
