One of the standouts of today's afternoon trading session has been Altria, which logged a -2.4% drop and underperformed the S&P 500 by -2.0%. The Tobacco stock is now trading at $42.91 per share and is -7.83% below its average target price of $46.55. Analysts have set target prices ranging from $36.1 to 73.0 dollars per share, and have given the stock an average rating of hold.
The market sentiment on the stock is decidedly optimistic, since Altria has a short interest of only 0.8%. This is the percentage of the share float that is being shorted. Each short position represents an investor's expectation that the price of the stock 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 Altria is to look at the percentage of institutions that are invested in the stock. In this case, 57.3% 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.
To sum up, Altria is probably the subject of mixed market sentiment because of an analyst consensus of some upside potential, a hold rating, a very low short interest, and an average number of institutional investors. At Market Inference, we believe that any investment decision should be preceded by an in-depth analysis of the company's fundamental values and a comparison with similar stocks.
Here's a snapshot of some important facts to keep in mind about MO:
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The stock has trailing 12 month earnings per share (EPS) of $4.57
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Altria has a trailing 12 month Price to Earnings (P/E) ratio of 9.4 compared to the S&P 500 average of 15.97
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Altria is a Consumer Defensive company, and the sector average P/E and P/B ratios are 21.21 and 4.12 respectively
