Bank of America (BAC) Dips More Than Broader Markets: What You Should Know

Bank of America (BAC) closed at $24.58 in the latest trading session, marking a -0.73% move from the prior day. This move lagged the S&P 500's daily loss of 0.04%. Meanwhile, the Dow lost 0.22%, and the Nasdaq, a tech-heavy index, added 0.16%.

Coming into today, shares of the nation's second-largest bank had lost 10.78% in the past month. In that same time, the Finance sector lost 5.92%, while the S&P 500 lost 4.99%.

Wall Street will be looking for positivity from BAC as it approaches its next earnings report date. This is expected to be January 16, 2019. The company is expected to report EPS of $0.64, up 36.17% from the prior-year quarter. Meanwhile, the Zacks Consensus Estimate for revenue is projecting net sales of $22.39 billion, up 9.55% from the year-ago period.

For the full year, our Zacks Consensus Estimates are projecting earnings of $2.55 per share and revenue of $91.11 billion, which would represent changes of +39.34% and +4.31%, respectively, from the prior year.

Any recent changes to analyst estimates for BAC should also be noted by investors. These revisions help to show the ever-changing nature of near-term business trends. As a result, we can interpret positive estimate revisions as a good sign for the company's business outlook.

Our research shows that these estimate changes are directly correlated with near-term stock prices. To benefit from this, we have developed the Zacks Rank, a proprietary model which takes these estimate changes into account and provides an actionable rating system.

Ranging from #1 (Strong Buy) to #5 (Strong Sell), the Zacks Rank system has a proven, outside-audited track record of outperformance, with #1 stocks returning an average of +25% annually since 1988. The Zacks Consensus EPS estimate remained stagnant within the past month. BAC is currently a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold).

Valuation is also important, so investors should note that BAC has a Forward P/E ratio of 9.71 right now. Its industry sports an average Forward P/E of 10.51, so we one might conclude that BAC is trading at a discount comparatively.

Meanwhile, BAC's PEG ratio is currently 1.21. The PEG ratio is similar to the widely-used P/E ratio, but this metric also takes the company's expected earnings growth rate into account. The Banks - Major Regional industry currently had an average PEG ratio of 1.11 as of yesterday's close.

The Banks - Major Regional industry is part of the Finance sector. This group has a Zacks Industry Rank of 107, putting it in the top 42% of all 250+ industries.

The Zacks Industry Rank gauges the strength of our individual industry groups by measuring the average Zacks Rank of the individual stocks within the groups. Our research shows that the top 50% rated industries outperform the bottom half by a factor of 2 to 1.

Be sure to follow all of these stock-moving metrics, and many more, on Zacks.com.

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