IBD Big Cap 20 Review: Large-Cap Stock List Curated Daily

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Disclosure: Investor’s Business Daily has provided ValueWalk a free subscription to IBD Digital for this review.

Investor’s Business Daily is jam-packed with a variety of different stock lists focusing on various factors investors might want to focus on for their portfolio. Access to these stock lists is included with a subscription to IBD Digital, and they seem to be of varying degrees of usefulness. I decided to check out IBD’s Big Cap 20 to see what that stock list was all about, and I found it to offer some great information that makes researching major stocks fast and easy.

IBD Big Cap 20 is full of recognizable names

It was clear from the first glance at the IBD Big Cap 20 that most of the stocks on this list are household names, but that wasn’t a surprise since the name obviously indicates that these are all large-cap stocks. Clicking on the Big Cap 20 list inside IBD Digital brings you to the main page for the stock list, which is topped by an article highlighting one of the stocks on the list. On the day I looked at it, Ulta was the stock of choice in the article at the top of the Big Cap 20 list.

Underneath the article, IBD explains that its Big Cap 20 Stock list includes “top-rated, large-cap growth stocks for your consideration.” The list is screened daily, so it seems that IBD reviews and updates it every day. Since all of the stocks on the list are growth stocks, it’s no surprise that most of them are household names. According to IBD, the stocks included on this list are companies that “can deliver outsize gains without the volatility of smaller growth stocks.”

Review of the IBD Big Cap 20 Stock list

On the day I looked at the Big Cap 20, Abiomed topped the list. Even though this one isn’t necessarily a household name, it’s clear why it’s on the list. Abiomed manufactures medical implants like the AbioCor artificial heart, and biomedical/ biopharmaceutical stocks tend to be hot these days in general.

Clicking on Abiomed’s ticker on the Big Cap 20 list takes you to the stock’s main page, which shows all the basic details about it, like its price and daily volume. IBD gave it a Composite Rating of 99, an EPS Rating of 99, and an RS rating of 98. When you scroll to the bottom of the page, you find even more details about Abiomed, like the date of the next earnings report, the date when the company had its initial public offering, and more. The page also includes a link that will take you to a full list of the company’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Going back to the Big Cap 20 list, it gives you easy access to lots of information about each of the stocks on the list. For each stock on the chart, you can choose between IBD’s Stock Checkup Report, its MarketSmith listing, and its Leaderboard listing. You can also click to easily add it to your own list of stocks you want to watch.

IBD Stock Checkup

MarketSmith and Leaderboard are two other premium products on their own, which will be covered in separate reviews, but clicking on the Stock Checkup Report on any of the stocks on the Big Cap 20 list brings you to a concise listing of various bits of information about them. At the top of the page, you’ll see IBD’s ranking for the stock compared to its ranking of other stocks within the same sector. For example, Abiomed was ranked at the top of the Medical-Products Group, followed by Align Technology and Inogen.

The Stock Checkup Report also includes details like which direction the stock is moving in, like whether the market is in a confirmed uptrend on it or not. The report also includes basic fundamental information, like earnings numbers and dates and the percentage of earnings surprise in the last quarter.

The report also includes other helpful percentages, like sales and earnings growth percentages, which makes it very easy to see what the company’s growth looks like without having to pull out a calculator and dig into the information yourself. The report also includes technical indicators for the company’s stock, including moving averages and details on whether funds are buying, selling or holding it.

Another impressive feature from IBD

Overall, I was quite impressed with IBD’s Big Cap 20 Stock List. It wasn’t just full of stocks many investors would consider to be must-own names, but all the stocks on the list were still well-known in their own right. The chart is easy to follow and summarizes some basic info on each of the stocks on the list.

It seems obvious that IBD puts some time and effort into researching the stocks on its Big Cap 20 list, although it wasn’t immediately clear what the parameters for inclusion were. The ratings on each of the stocks obviously factor in, but there are many stocks with high ratings, so it isn’t obvious why the Big Cap 20 Stocks are chosen for any particular day.

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