Are Industrial Products Stocks Lagging Caterpillar (CAT) This Year?

For those looking to find strong Industrial Products stocks, it is prudent to search for companies in the group that are outperforming their peers. Caterpillar (CAT) is a stock that can certainly grab the attention of many investors, but do its recent returns compare favorably to the sector as a whole? Let's take a closer look at the stock's year-to-date performance to find out.Caterpillar is a member of the Industrial Products sector. This group includes 181 individual stocks and currently holds a Zacks Sector Rank of #8. The Zacks Sector Rank gauges the strength of our 16 individual sector groups by measuring the average Zacks Rank of the individual stocks within the groups.The Zacks Rank is a proven model that highlights a variety of stocks with the right characteristics to outperform the market over the next one to three months. The system emphasizes earnings estimate revisions and favors companies with improving earnings outlooks. Caterpillar is currently sporting a Zacks Rank of #1 (Strong Buy).Over the past 90 days, the Zacks Consensus Estimate for CAT's full-year earnings has moved 8.4% higher. This is a sign of improving analyst sentiment and a positive earnings outlook trend.Our latest available data shows that CAT has returned about 73.6% since the start of the calendar year. Meanwhile, the Industrial Products sector has returned an average of 21% on a year-to-date basis. As we can see, Caterpillar is performing better than its sector in the calendar year.Kaiser Aluminum (KALU) is another Industrial Products stock that has outperformed the sector so far this year. Since the beginning of the year, the stock has returned 52.3%.In Kaiser Aluminum's case, the consensus EPS estimate for the current year increased 18.6% over the past three months. The stock currently has a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy).Looking more specifically, Caterpillar belongs to the Manufacturing - Construction and Mining industry, a group that includes 6 individual stocks and currently sits at #186 in the Zacks Industry Rank. On average, stocks in this group have gained 65.1% this year, meaning that CAT is performing better in terms of year-to-date returns. In contrast, Kaiser Aluminum falls under the Metal Products - Procurement and Fabrication industry. Currently, this industry has 6 stocks and is ranked #52. Since the beginning of the year, the industry has moved +10.1%.Going forward, investors interested in Industrial Products stocks should continue to pay close attention to Caterpillar and Kaiser Aluminum as they could maintain their solid performance.Beyond Nvidia: AI's Second Wave Is HereThe AI revolution has already minted millionaires. But the stocks everyone knows about aren't likely to keep delivering the biggest profits. AI’s second wave is moving from infrastructure to implementation and these companies are at the forefront of this transition, positioned to become what Amazon and Google were to the internet era.See Stocks Now >>This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com).Zacks Investment ResearchWeiter zum vollständigen Artikel bei Zacks Weiter zum vollständigen Artikel bei Zacks