TipRanks has over 5,000 US and Canada-based stocks in its coverage universe. And now investors can take better advantage of the depth of this data. We have just released a valuable Stock Comparison tool that brings together all our unique market insights. Investors can select up to 7 stocks and see how they compare on key indicators like analyst consensus, price target and stock performance. The result: you can quickly and easily discover the most compelling investing opportunities. Let’s see how this works now:
Pick Your Stocks
First select the stocks you want to compare. There are several pre-loaded options, including high dividend stocks and biotechs- but you can add and delete these stocks as you wish. If we select the Healthcare option, for example, the tool pulls stocks such as pharma giants Pfizer (PFE) and Merck (MRK) :
As well as market cap and price change, you can also include Analyst Consensus and Average Analyst Price Target. What’s more, the Best Analyst Consensus is based only on ratings from analysts with a strong track record of success. As these top analysts consistently outperform the market, their consensus speaks volumes about a stock’s investing potential.
In this case we can see that Merck is the only stock out of the five selected to display a bullish ‘Strong Buy’ consensus from analysts and Best-Performing analysts alike. These analysts see Merck shares soaring over 7% in the months ahead. Meanwhile we can see that all the other stocks hold a more cautiously optimistic ‘Moderate Buy’ consensus. At the same time, its immediately apparent that Pfizer boasts the highest dividend yield at 3.4%- which may make it the most appealing option for dividend-focused investors.
Customize The Data Points
Those are the datapoints we chose to include in our initial comparison. But other options include:
- Insights from a range of financial experts, including 6,700 bloggers, 42,000 corporate insiders and over 200 hedge fund managers.
- Investor Sentiment. Thanks to TipRanks’ award winning stock tracker, Smart Portfolio, we can analyze over 250,000 investor portfolios. This allows plentiful insights into whether investors are buying or selling certain stocks at any given time.
- News Sentiment and Media Buzz. Our algorithms detect words that relate to the particular stock, then grade the sentiment of these words and calculates the relevance and importance, resulting in a Bullish or Bearish categorization. For example, if we select to include news sentiment then we can see the following:
While both Merck and Roche (RHHBY) share a Very Bullish news sentiment, the outlook is notably more concerning for Johnson and Johnson (JNJ), which is indicating a Very Bearish news sentiment. Johnson and Johnson for example has just received a warning letter over breast implants, whereas Merck is attracting positive attention for an extended partnership with NGM Biopharmaceuticals.
Compare Price Performance
Plus, scrolling down, we find a performance comparison of the selected stocks over the last three years. Clearly, Merck has recorded the most significant gain- rising 71% during this time. That’s compared to 60% for Pfizer, and an impressive 45% sprint for Novartis (NVS).
Delve Deeper Into Specific Stocks
Want to learn more? You can then click on a stock ticker to delve deeper into TipRanks’ insights. For example, if we click on the Merck ticker, we can see that Louise Chen (Track Record & Ratings) recently initiated coverage of the company with a Street-high $95 price target. That’s for upside potential of 16%.
“We are initiating coverage of Merck & Co. with an OW rating and a 12-month PT of $95. Sales growth across oncology, vaccines, animal health, and select hospital/specialty care products, as well as margin expansion opportunities are underappreciated” commented the five-star analyst. “Therefore, we expect upward earnings revisions and multiple expansion in 2019+ to drive MRK’s shares higher.”
In particular, Chen sees a huge- and underappreciated- for Merck in China which ‘could equate to billions of sales that are not yet in the forecasts for Keytruda.’ This is Merck’s big money-maker, an anti-PD-1 immunotherapy to help fight certain cancers.
Now it’s your turn.
You can find the Stock Comparison tool under the dropdown ‘Research Tools’ menu on the top righthand of the TipRanks homepage. The link is under the ‘Screener’ category.
