Wednesday, February 3, 2010 7:40 PM

Analysts are the most bullish on these names

Scott Adams

WHAT ARE WE LOOKING FOR?

Stocks with the highest analyst expectations.

MORE ABOUT TODAY'S SCREEN

Love them or hate them, analysts play a big part in moving stocks. Some investors blindly follow their recommendations, while others use analysts for ideas and insight. Today we'll look at stocks with “buy” or “strong buy” recommendations and target prices that are far in excess of the actual stock price. Presumably, these stocks are the ones that analysts believe are the most undervalued.

We'll look at Canadian stocks with market caps of at least $250-million. All figures are converted back to Canadian dollars. We'll use Thomson One Analytics as the screening tool.

WHAT DID WE FIND OUT?

The list is dominated by Canadian resources stocks. Either analysts are wrong and their commodity price forecasts are too high, or they're correctly predicting where the biggest returns are coming.

As with most screens, more digging is required before deciding to buy one of these stocks. This screen wasn't able to catch how many analysts are following a stock or when recommendations were last updated. US Gold, for instance, has just one analyst covering the stock from a small shop in the U.S.

If you don't like commodities stocks, two names that stand out from the list are Cangene and Patheon, both are in Canada's small and often-ignored biotech industry.

Scott Adams

WHAT ARE WE LOOKING FOR?

Stocks with the highest analyst expectations.

MORE ABOUT TODAY'S SCREEN

Love them or hate them, analysts play a big part in moving stocks. Some investors blindly follow their recommendations, while others use analysts for ideas and insight. Today we'll look at stocks with “buy” or “strong buy” recommendations and target prices that are far in excess of the actual stock price. Presumably, these stocks are the ones that analysts believe are the most undervalued.

We'll look at Canadian stocks with market caps of at least $250-million. All figures are converted back to Canadian dollars. We'll use Thomson One Analytics as the screening tool.

WHAT DID WE FIND OUT?

The list is dominated by Canadian resources stocks. Either analysts are wrong and their commodity price forecasts are too high, or they're correctly predicting where the biggest returns are coming.

As with most screens, more digging is required before deciding to buy one of these stocks. This screen wasn't able to catch how many analysts are following a stock or when recommendations were last updated. US Gold, for instance, has just one analyst covering the stock from a small shop in the U.S.

If you don't like commodities stocks, two names that stand out from the list are Cangene and Patheon, both are in Canada's small and often-ignored biotech industry.