For Immediate Release
Chicago, IL - December 8, 2011 - Zacks Investment Research
presents their newest list of stocks featured in their weekly
Research Wizard article, which describes how to profit from stock
market opportunities. The stocks in this article focus on the
casino and gaming industry. Stocks include:
Bally Technologies Inc.
(
BYI
),
Boyd Gaming Corporation
(
BYD
),
Monarch Casino & Resort Inc.
(
MCRI
),
Multimedia Games Inc.
(
MGAM
) and
Pinnacle Entertainment Inc.
(
PNK
).
Learn more about Research Wizard at this site:
Research Wizard
Here are highlights from our most recent Research Wizard
feature:
Does your stock picking strategy work?
You may know a thing or two about Blackjack-or
Vingt-et-un
, as the French, and supposed creators of the game, call it.
But even if you've never played the game, or seen the movie
21
, you're likely aware that people have developed clever methods for
shifting the odds to favor the player over the casino. You
also probably realize that these methods were developed through
systematic testing. Having written a paper on card-counting
methods in graduate school, I've reviewed the results of many of
these tests, and I can tell you that some methods are clearly more
successful than others. Needless to say, the strategies that
work best are the ones most often used by professional card
counters.
Since I'm somewhat of a betting man, I'll wager that if you're
reading this, you're already an investor and probably have a large
percentage of your net worth in the stock market. Perhaps you
even actively trade stocks in your own accounts instead of using
mutual funds or ETFs. So my questions to you are: 1. Is your
stock picking strategy good? And 2. How do you know?
Maybe you've been actively trading your clearly defined strategy
for over five years, have been keeping diligent trading records and
are confident when you say that you've outperformed your benchmark
by X% over that time frame. (Remember, if you can't beat your
benchmark, what's the point?) Or maybe you don't have a good
strategy because either you can't really explain it or it doesn't
honestly beat the benchmark. The bottom line is you need to
know what works and what doesn't, right?
So how do you do that? With backtesting! Backtesting
is the process of assessing a stock-picking strategy by applying it
to past data. The important facet about backtesting is that
it actually shows you how a strategy would have performed if it had
existed in the past. Backtesting also allows you to see what
works and what doesn't-without actually risking your wallet.
Of course if you were patient enough, you could paper trade for
years to see if you had something and if you didn't, you could
develop another strategy and paper trade for another several
years. That might work in the thousand-year lifespan of, say,
an elf, but, for humans, life's too short.
To do this accurately, you need a tool that replicates the data
within the time frame in question. You're going to need the
ability to buy and sell stocks that no longer exist, access to
historical financial statements and prices, the ability to handle
spin-offs and stock splits, and numerous other absolutely necessary
features. You might say to yourself, "Nothing like that
exists" or "Only institutional and professional money managers have
access to that information." But I'm here to tell you that
your thoughts are mistaken. This sort of tool does indeed
exist for the individual investor, and it's called the Zacks
Research Wizard
.
With the Research Wizard you can develop and backtest your
investment strategies on over 10 years of data, which includes
information from corporate reports, analyst earnings estimates,
sales estimates and recommendations, and stock prices. You'll
also be able to test combination strategies if you have multiple
ideas.
Do you like to trade every week or are you more tax sensitive
and trade monthly, quarterly or even less frequently? No
problem. With the Research Wizard you can change your trading
frequency or holding periods to fit your trading style.
However, to truly see if your strategy is worthwhile, you'll
need to compete against a benchmark. RW offers you the
opportunity to test your strategies against a few different
benchmarks. You can actually discover what does and doesn't
work, based on historical data. You will be able to select
strategies proven to work over time and you can feel confident and
assured in your investment decisions.
Here's an example keeping with the casino theme. Using RW,
I built a strategy by selecting only those companies whose
principal business is leisure services, specifically casino and
gaming. My strategy also included only those stocks which are
highly or moderately rated per the Zacks Rank. I then
selected the five with the best Cash Flow-to-Price ratio, which
measures your purchase value of cash generated from
operations. Since you'll want high cash flows at a lower
price, a high Cash Flow/ Price ratio is better.
This strategy was then backtested from 2001 - 2010 and the
results show an average annual return of 34.5% compared to the
S&P 500's 3.4%. Since this strategy, on average,
outperformed the benchmark by 30+% per year, I'm pretty confident
that I've got something here.
Here are the 5 stocks this strategy selected today
(12/8/11):
BYI
- Bally Technologies, Inc.
Based in Vegas, Bally Technologies operates as a diversified
gaming company, whish designs, manufactures, operates, and
distributes gaming devices and systems. This company has a
Cash Flow/Price ratio of 11%, which means for every dollar you pay
for the stock, the firm is generating 11 cents in cash from
operations.
BYD
- Boyd Gaming Corporation
Boyd Gaming operates 15 casinos in 6 different states.
This stock looks like a good value buy with a Cash Flow/Price ratio
of 38%.
MCRI
- Monarch Casino & Resort Inc.
This company operates a hotel/casino facility in Reno. The
stock of this gaming company remains a fairly good buy based on its
14% Cash Flow/Price ratio.
MGAM
- Multimedia Games Inc.
Multimedia Games designs, manufactures, distributes, and
maintains gaming machines and video lottery terminals. This
company is rated "strong buy" on its Zacks Rank and also has a very
good Cash Flow/Price ratio of 27%.
PNK
- Pinnacle Entertainment Inc.
Pinnacle owns and operates 7 casinos in 4 states. You
could get some good cash flows for the price with the stock of this
company with a CF/P of 19%.
Now it's your turn to use the Research Wizard yourself to create
your own strategies. You'll be a better investor for it and
your portfolio returns will illustrate this.
Click here
to learn more!
Click here to learn more about this stock
research tool.
Disclosure: Officers, directors and/or employees of Zacks
Investment Research may own or have sold short securities and/or
hold long and/or short positions in options that are mentioned in
this material. An affiliated investment advisory firm may own or
have sold short securities and/or hold long and/or short
positions in options that are mentioned in this material.
Disclosure: Performance information for Zacks' portfolios and
strategies are available at:
http://www.zacks.com/performance
.
About Zacks
Zacks.com is a property of Zacks Investment Research, Inc.,
which was formed in 1978 by Leonard Zacks. As a PhD in mathematics
Len knew he could find patterns in stock market data that would
lead to superior investment results. Amongst his many
accomplishments was the formation of his proprietary stock picking
system; the Zacks Rank, which continues to outperform the market by
nearly a 3 to 1 margin. The best way to unlock the profitable stock
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Investors should always research companies and securities before
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offer or solicitation to buy or sell any security.
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BOYD GAMING CP (
BYD
): Free Stock Analysis Report
BALLY TECH INC (
BYI
): Free Stock Analysis Report
MONARCH CASINO (
MCRI
): Free Stock Analysis Report
MULTIMEDIA GAME (
MGAM
): Free Stock Analysis Report
PINNACLE ENTRTN (
PNK
): Free Stock Analysis Report
Zacks Investment
Research