With a sudden -1.3% drop to $64.81, W. P. Carey has Wall Street wondering if its shares will keep moving past its target price of $62.1. With an average rating of hold, and analysts assigning target prices from 52.0 to 74.0 dollars per share, investors will be betting heavily on the Specialty Real Estate Investment Trust stock's next move.
It seems the market sentiment regarding W. P. Carey is mostly optimistic, since it has a short interest of only 4.8%. This is the percentage of the share float that is being shorted by investors who are hoping the stock's price will decrease in the future.
When a stock is sold short, it means an investor has borrowed shares of the stock from their broker, and then sold them at the going market price. The investor hopes for the price to decline, so that they might buy those shares back at a lower price in the future. Once they do, they can return the borrowed shares to their broker, and keep the profit they made on the transaction.
Another way to gauge the sentiment on W. P. Carey is to look at the percentage of institutions that are invested in the stock. In this case, 65.1% of the shares are held by pension, mutual, and hedge funds, which shows that these institutions probably have strong confidence in the stock.
If institutions are invested in a particular stock, it shows in most cases that they have performed quality research and concluded that it is a good investment. In some cases, however, increases in institutional ownership could be a sign of a takeover attempt or proxy fight, which can actually injure share prices. Also, institutions are not infallible, and can certainly make miscalculations -- often with spectacular results.
Overall, there is mixed market sentiment towards W. P. Carey because of an analyst consensus of little upside potential, a hold rating, an average amount of shares sold short, and an average number of institutional investors. Investors should not base their decisions on market sentiment only, they should also be aware of a stock's fundamentals before committing.
At a glance, here are some essential statistics you may want to know about WPC:
-
It has trailing 12 month earnings per share (EPS) of $3.64 per share
-
W. P. Carey has a trailing 12 month Price to Earnings (P/E) ratio of 17.8 while the S&P 500 average is 15.97
-
The company has a Price to Book (P/B) ratio of 1.52 in contrast to the S&P 500's average ratio of 2.95
-
W. P. Carey is a Real Estate company, and the sector average P/E and P/B ratios are 25.55 and 2.1 respectively
