In 1978, Zacks Founder and CEO hit upon a key discovery: earnings estimate revisions are the most powerful force impacting stock prices. With this crucial finding, he developed the Zacks Rank to harness the power of earnings estimates.

For more than a quarter century, Zacks #1 Rank Stocks have more than doubled the S&P 500 with an average gain of +24.62% per year. These returns cover a period from January 1, 1988 through November 4, 2019.

The Zacks #1 Rank stocks are ideally suited for folks who rely on momentum or technical analysis because it can tip them off before most other systems. The Zacks #1 Rank is about “cause and effect”. The cause of the move is positive revisions in earnings estimates. The effect of an upward shift in earnings estimates prompts more investors to take an interest in the company, pushing prices higher.

Zacks #1 vs. The S&P 500

The 5 Zacks Ranks

The Power of Zacks Rank

Given the sheer number of earnings estimate revisions made on a daily basis, it can be very difficult to determine which stocks to buy and which ones to avoid.

The Zacks Rank solves this problem by helping investors harness the power of earnings estimate revisions to trade and invest more successfully.

The Zacks Rank is a proprietary stock-rating model that uses trends in earnings estimate revisions and EPS surprises to classify stocks into five groups as shown to the left. The historical average annual return for stocks in each Rank are also shown.

Zacks Industry Rank

The Zacks Industry Rank is also updated daily, and is based on average ranks of all the stocks in each of the 265 industry groups. The best stocks in the best groups are particularly set to move higher.

The Lists provide a sortable view of the information in the Map. All windows, including the Lists, can be made transparent or translucent, which means you can still see the Map behind them, giving you an optimized view of all the information.

Green and Red bars in the List correspond to Green and Red Cylinders in the Map. By sorting on this information, you can instantly find Groups or Symbols that are gaining strength or weakness. 

Click the Above column to bring the tallest Cylinders (strongest stocks) to the top. Click the Below column to bring the tallest Cylinders below the Map to the top (the weakest stocks). 

Enable the Auto-Sort feature and the List will sort itself in real time, automatically bringing candidates to the top as the information in the Map changes.

There are 3 buttons at the top of the List; Groups, Symbols and Both. Click Groups to get a streamlined List of the Groups with only Group composite charts displayed when clicked. Click Symbols to see a List of Symbols only. The most powerful view is that obtained using the Both button.

In this view, the List is arranged according to Industry Group with Symbols in the Group. In this example to the left, the Homebuilder and Trucking Groups rose to the top, indicating they are the strongest Groups right now.

We already had the ability to show indicator values from other timeframes in the VisualTrader List. Now we can see it in the charts!

The new Multiple Timeframe Indicators feature substantially extend VisualTrader’s analytic abilities. Now we can plot any indicator from any timeframe in any chart. For example, we can plot the Weekly RSI and Daily RSI together in the Daily Chart.

Dynamic Indicators in higher timeframes adjust as the lower timeframe moves forward. As shown in the example to the right, the standard Daily value is based on the previous session. Obviously, that means there is just one value for each day.

For Dynamic Daily, we calculate the prior day’s bar on every 5 minute bar. This provides the benefit of the Daily view, with the additional benefit of capturing changes that happen in the CURRENT session!

A good demonstration of the benefit of this is shown in the charts to the right. On October 14th, Wal-Mart reverses trend and momentum and falls throughout the trading session. The top chart showing the Daily Indicator using the previous day’s value is still showing rising momentum.

But the bottom chart shows how the Dynamic Daily Indicator reacts to falling price and provides you with much more valuable information.

The benefit of this is clear when you calculate indicators dynamically. They show the effect of sudden price changes as new data is received without losing the benefit of the higher timeframe information.

Fibonacci Levels are one of the most powerful tools you can add to any chart. Place the tool in your chart from a recent HIGH to a LOW and let the Fibonacci Levels guide you as you trade the chart. Look at how well the chart reacted to the lines in this chart.

It’s also 100% Customizable. It comes with default levels that are widely recognized by traders, but you can change them to any you would like to use and define up to 10 levels. The new tool shows both price and retracement value. 

It’s easy to forget edits you’ve made to Strategies. Now, you can add Notes.

VisualTrader 12 includes the “Hollow Candle” template used by many traders.

We have revised “defaults” to values that most users want to use, such as added two New Strategies to the
install: One System Strategy + Filter by Indicator and updated Strategy Templates. 

Adjustable Signal Size

Now you can set your Signals to be up to 10x the default size.

In VisualTrader 12, it is easy to add Zacks Rank to ANY OmniTrader Strategy using a simple Filter. VT ALSO collects and saves historical Zacks Ranks* which are used in Strategy testing.

We did this with a number of Strategies, and were surprised and pleased at the results.

In all cases, adding Zacks Rank boosted PPT significantly. In one case it was a whopping 400%! See table below!

The ability to use Zacks Rank in Strategies is perhaps the most powerful application of the ranking data. Use Zacks Rank to improve any existing Strategies you have to make them perform better!

* Zacks Rank History has been collected since July 2019, and continues to be updated on
our servers.