Is Assured Guaranty (AGO) Stock Outpacing Its Finance Peers This Year?
The Finance group has plenty of great stocks, but investors should always be looking for companies that are outperforming their peers. Assured Guaranty (AGO) is a stock that can certainly grab the attention of many investors, but do its recent returns compare favorably to the sector as a whole? Let's take a closer look at the stock's year-to-date performance to find out.
Assured Guaranty is one of 857 individual stocks in the Finance sector. Collectively, these companies sit at #5 in the Zacks Sector Rank. The Zacks Sector Rank considers 16 different groups, measuring the average Zacks Rank of the individual stocks within the sector to gauge the strength of each group.
The Zacks Rank is a proven model that highlights a variety of stocks with the right characteristics to outperform the market over the next one to three months. The system emphasizes earnings estimate revisions and favors companies with improving earnings outlooks. Assured Guaranty is currently sporting a Zacks Rank of #1 (Strong Buy).
Over the past three months, the Zacks Consensus Estimate for AGO's full-year earnings has moved 23.7% higher. This shows that analyst sentiment has improved and the company's earnings outlook is stronger.
Based on the most recent data, AGO has returned 22.4% so far this year. Meanwhile, the Finance sector has returned an average of 4.1% on a year-to-date basis. This means that Assured Guaranty is performing better than its sector in terms of year-to-date returns.
CleanSpark (CLSK) is another Finance stock that has outperformed the sector so far this year. Since the beginning of the year, the stock has returned 51.6%.
In CleanSpark's case, the consensus EPS estimate for the current year increased 47.2% over the past three months. The stock currently has a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy).
Looking more specifically, Assured Guaranty belongs to the Insurance - Multi line industry, which includes 36 individual stocks and currently sits at #45 in the Zacks Industry Rank. On average, stocks in this group have gained 6.2% this year, meaning that AGO is performing better in terms of year-to-date returns.
CleanSpark, however, belongs to the Financial - Miscellaneous Services industry. Currently, this 68-stock industry is ranked #151. The industry has moved +3.9% so far this year.
Going forward, investors interested in Finance stocks should continue to pay close attention to Assured Guaranty and CleanSpark as they could maintain their solid performance.
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