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 tell investors which stocks their peers keep tabs on in each industry. In the case of the IT services industry, watch interest is the percentage of people keeping an eye on IT services stocks in general who are specifically watching each company. By looking at what stocks attract investors' greatest interest within an industry, you can get ahead of the curve by finding hot stocks that you might have otherwise overlooked.
The most-watched IT services stock is ...
Looking at the aggregate data, we see that IBM (NYSE: IBM) surpasses the rest in terms of watch interest -- and for good reason. As CAPS player JBMiaCity wrote in June: "IBM is an innovation center much like [Apple] and will continue to outperform as it continues to drive the high tech markets and adapt its business model."
Here are the rest of the top 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.
|
No. |
Company |
Market Cap (in millions) |
CAPS Rating (out of 5) |
Watch Interest |
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
1 | IBM | $206,586 | **** | 27.9% |
|
2 | Automatic Data Processing (Nasdaq: ADP) | $24,186 | **** | 14.8% |
|
3 | Paychex (Nasdaq: PAYX) | $9,810 | **** | 6.5% |
|
4 | Accenture (NYSE: ACN) | $36,867 | **** | 4.2% |
|
5 | Cognizant Technology Solutions (Nasdaq: CTSH) | $20,630 | **** | 3.8% |
|
6 | Teradata (NYSE: TDC) | $9,075 | **** | 2.6% |
|
7 | Fiserv (Nasdaq: FISV) | $8,022 | **** | 2.5% |
|
8 | iGATE (Nasdaq: IGTE) | $776 | **** | 2.4% |
|
9 | SAIC (NYSE: SAI) | $5,277 | **** | 2.3% |
|
10 | VeriFone Systems (NYSE: PAY) | $3,303 | ** | 2.1% |
|
11 | China Information Technology (Nasdaq: CNIT) | $105 | *** | 2.0% |
|
12 | Computer Sciences Corp. (NYSE: CSC) | $5,189 | **** | 1.7% |
|
13 | Infosys (Nasdaq: INFY) | $30,505 | **** | 1.6% |
|
14 | Unisys (NYSE: UIS) | $816 | *** | 1.5% |
|
15 | LML Payment Systems (Nasdaq: LMLP) |
$79 | **** |
1.0% |
Source: Motley Fool, Motley Fool CAPS.
Whether you're keeping an eye on the industry stalwarts like IBM or are watching an up-and-comer like LML Payment Systems, 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.
