Wall Street has been on a wild ride over the past three months, pushing the major indices into the red for the year. This is primarily thanks to global trade worries, threats of inflation, concerns over speedy rates hike, ongoing political turmoil in Washington and geopolitical tensions.
However, many stocks survived the market turmoil thanks to their business practices and growth prospects. Additionally, solid corporate earnings and enticing fundamentals like rising estimates have made these stocks winning bets in the downtrodden three-month period. Notably, a strong earnings estimate revision trend indicates the company's strength and higher probability of outperforming the market compared to its peers.
Total Q1 earnings for the 78.5% market capitalization of the S&P 500 that have reported results so far are up 24% from the same period last year on 9.5% higher revenues, with 78.4% beating EPS estimates and 75.8% beating revenue estimates. Though the revenue beat is tracking below the preceding quarter's level, earnings are significantly higher than the same group of companies in the other recent periods. Earnings and revenue growth also represent acceleration from all other recent periods.
Given this, we have highlighted five stocks that have easily led the way higher over the past three months and will likely continue to do so given their Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy) and #2 (Buy).
Tenet Healthcare Corporation (THC – Free Report)
This Texas-based is a multinational investor-owned healthcare services company. Shares of THC surged 71% in the past three months driven by risk-off trading that compelled investors to move toward a defensive stock like THC. Robust earnings, wherein the company came up with a huge positive surprise of 2,950% and rising earnings estimates added to the strength. The stock saw solid earnings estimate revision of 24 cents over the past month for this year and has an expected growth rate of 43.21%. It has a Zacks Rank #2 and a VGM Score of A. Further, it belongs to a top-ranked Zacks industry (top 29%).
