尋找熱門板塊的竅門

在投資方法中,最大效益來自於抄熱門板塊.那末,如何知道哪一個板塊會成為下一個熱點? 下麵這篇文章(ZT)或多或少能告訴我們其中一些奧秘:

Spot the next hot sector before it lifts off Wish you’d foreseen the energy sector boom? Here’s how to catch the next big sector surge before you've missed out.  By Harry Domash Sometimes investing success is more about picking the right industry than it is about picking the right stock. Over the past year, for example, owning a below-average energy company has been a better bet than, say, owning a great newspaper publisher. So with this column, I'll describe a strategy for using MSN’s Deluxe Screener to identify which sectors of the economy are heating up and which are cooling. For our purposes, an industry is a group of companies in closely related businesses such as women’s clothing stores, small banks, semiconductor-equipment makers or airlines. Start investing with $100. Explore our new ETF center. Big money Mutual funds and other big investors track industry stock performance closely to see which industries are showing signs of life. Once a trend is identified, an industry “rotates into favor” as big players begin accumulating shares in the best companies. When those become fully valued, money moves into secondary stocks in the same industry. The trick, of course, is to identify industry trends early in the game, before it’s too late to act. In a column on this topic last year, I described a strategy of getting a jump on the action by focusing on factors likely to move individual stock prices. Then, if I spotted several stocks in the same industry with these characteristics, I could assume that the entire industry was ready for a move. Since last year's column was quite successful in spotting sectors on the rise, I'll give a quick explanation of how it worked, and then take a shot at making it even more useful. I used two factors to detect stocks likely to move: Big changes in the consensus of Wall Street analysts’ earnings forecasts. Recent earnings surprises (when companies beat those forecasts). I didn’t pull those out of thin air. Many professional investors pay close attention to those factors when trying to determine which way a stock is likely to move. Meaningful changes in what analysts think a company will be earning in coming quarters almost always move stock prices in the same direction as the forecast change. Equally significant, once forecasts change, they often continue moving in the same direction. Why? Most likely, the analyst who made the first change picked up on new information that other analysts hadn’t considered. When those other analysts take another look, chances are they will revise their forecasts in the same direction. A happy surprise An earnings surprise is the difference between a company’s reported earnings and the consensus forecasts. It’s a positive surprise when a firm reports earnings above forecasts and a negative surprise when reported earnings fall short. All else equal, significant positive surprises usually move stock prices on announcement day, up for a positive surprise and down when earnings come in below forecasts. And positive-surprise stocks often continue to outperform the overall market for several weeks after the announcement date, while negative-surprise stocks typically underperform. I used two simple screens for last year’s column: one for finding stocks that are likely to outperform the market (Hot Stocks), the other for finding potentially weak stocks (Cold Stocks). My Hot Stocks screen required an increase in consensus forecasts during the most recent week and a recent positive earnings surprise of at least 10% (reported earnings of at least 10% above forecasts). The Cold Stock screen looked for exactly the opposite; a decrease in earnings forecasts over the past week and a 10% or more negative earnings surprise. My Hot Stock screen listed 165 stocks, while my Cold Stock screen turned up 140 stocks. I sorted each list based on Industry Name and tabulated how many times each industry appeared on each list. I counted Hot Screen listings as positive numbers and Cold Screen listings as negative. For example, an industry scored three if it turned up five times on the hot list and twice on the cold list (5-2). Industries with scores of three or more qualified for my Hot Industries list and those with scores of minus three or lower made the Cold Industries list. All told, seven industries made the hot list. Four made the cold list. Last week, I checked the returns for each industry’s index, measuring their gains three and six months after I ran my screens on May 5, 2005. Here are the results. For each industry, the table lists the hot/cold score when I ran the screen, along with the returns.  Hot and cold industries using last year’s screen Hot Industries Hot/Cold score Return after 3 months Return after 6 months Oil and gas equipment and services +7 29% 37% Residential construction +4 19% 4% Oil and gas drilling and exploration +4 26% 33% Property and casualty insurance +3 6% 13% Aerospace/defense +3 6% 3% Railroads +3 10% 20% Science and tech instruments +3 11% 14% Average 15% 18% Cold Industries Hot/Cold score Return after 3 months Return after 6 months Gold (mining) -6 12% 24% Paper and paper products -6 2% -5% Savings and loans -5 4% 0% Asset management -3 8% 23% Average 7% 11% The hot industries averaged 15% and 18% returns, respectively, for the three- and six-month periods. By contrast, the cold industries recorded 7% and 11% returns for the same periods. If I restricted the results to the highest-scoring industries (+4 or higher for hot and –4 or lower for cold), the hottest industries returned 25% after three months vs. 6% for the coldest. After six months, the scores were identical: 25% for the hottest vs. 6% for the coldest. Last week, I ran the screens again with a couple of modifications. This time, I looked for earnings-forecast changes over the past month instead of the one-week time frame I used last year. Expanding the time frame lists more stocks. That, in turn, allows me to confine my lists to stocks with bigger surprises -- specifically, at least 20%, compared to last year’s 10% requirement. The parameters for this year’s Hot Stock Screen are: Screening Parameter: Earnings Estimate Increased Since Screening Parameter: Recent Qtr Surprise % >= 22 (Note: I increased this number to get as close to 200 companies as possible.) The parameters for this year's Cold Stock Screen are: Screening Parameter: Earnings Estimate Decreased Since Screening Parameter: Recent Qtr Surprise % <= -20  Hot and cold industries using my revised screen Hot Industries Hot/Cold score Communications equipment 8 Semiconductor equip. & materials 7 Biotechnology 4 Semiconductors (all types) 4 Investment brokerage 3 Lumber, wood production 3 Cold Industries Hot/Cold score Independent oil & gas -6 Medical appliances & equipment -6 Synthetics -4 Broadcasting-Radio -3 Hospitals -3 Internet information providers -3 Wireless communications -3 I wasn’t surprised to see investment-brokerage firms, which have been in the news for reporting blowout earnings, on the hot list. Same thing for communications-equipment makers, which are profiting from the switch to everything broadband. Also, given the recent drop in energy prices, seeing independent oil and gas firms on the cold list wasn’t a shock. But I was surprised to see semiconductor-equipment makers as well as the chip makers on the hot list. Similarly, I didn’t expect to see medical-appliance and equipment makers, Internet-information providers, or wireless-communications suppliers on the cold list. By the way, firms in the “synthetics” industry make plastics and other chemical products. A starting point Even in hot industries, some stocks will buck the trend and go down. Pros making an industry play usually focus on the strongest players in terms of stock-price performance. To pick the best performers, check the Relative Strength figures on the Company Report page. Relative strength measures a stock’s performance compared to the overall market. For example, a relative strength of 90 means that the stock outperformed 90% of all stocks over the period measured, so higher is better. The report lists relative strengths for the past three, six and 12 months. Give most weight to the six- and then the three-month figures.