PowerRatings Best of the Requests: CL, PFE, JNJ, MO, APL

What stocks are active investors and long term traders most interested in today? For those using our Long Term PowerRatings to find stocks that are likely to outperform the average stock in a year's time, those stocks include a pair of drug makers, assorted blue chip corporations and an oil and gas pipeline company.

Ironically, the stock that investors likely know the least about--Atlas Pipeline Partners (APL@APL | Quote | Chart | News | PowerRating)--is the stock that is the most attractive out of all five stocks in today's report. With its high Long Term PowerRating and its top-rated Industry PowerRating, Atlas Pipeline Partners is certainly a stock that more investors need to know more about.

Atlas Pipeline Partners has a Long Term PowerRating of 9, along with one other stock in today's report. Our research, examining thousands and thousands of simulated stock trades between 1995 and 2007, revealed that stocks with Long Term PowerRatings of 9 have been both more reliable and better performers than the average stock.

Specifically, we learned that 9-rated stocks were higher one year later more than 79% of the time. By comparison, the average stock was higher one year later less than 68% of the time.

In addition to being more reliable, 9-rated stocks simply outperformed the average stock in a year's time. While the average stock tended to gain between 12-13% on average after one year, stocks with Long Term PowerRatings of 9 actually gained more than 18% in a year's time, on average.

Atlas Pipeline Partners also comes from an industry, Oil and Gas Pipelines, with the highest Industry PowerRating possible, 10. Our research into industry group behavior between 1995 and 2007 showed us that industries with the highest possible PowerRating of 10 produced average annualized returns of more than 35%. The average industry group, by comparison, achieved average annualized returns of approximately 14.61% over the same time period.

Colgate-Palmolive (CL@CL | Quote | Chart | News | PowerRating) is our other 9-rated stock for today. Colgate-Palmolive belongs to the 8-rated Personal Products industry group along with other 9-rated stocks such as Procter & Gamble (PG@PG | Quote | Chart | News | PowerRating) and Kimberly Clark (KMB@KMB | Quote | Chart | News | PowerRating).

The Personal Products industry group has an Industry PowerRating of 8. While not as impressive as the top rated Oil & Gas Pipelines industry (or the Major Drug Manufacturers industry which we will discuss shortly), an industry with a PowerRating of 8 is still an excellent place to look for stocks. We found that 8-rated industries also significantly outperformed the average industry group, returning more than 20% on an average annualized basis since 1995.

Both of the next two stocks share the same Long Term PowerRating as well as the same industry group. Pfizer (PFE@PFE | Quote | Chart | News | PowerRating) and Johnson and Johnson (JNJ@JNJ | Quote | Chart | News | PowerRating) are both 8-rated members of the Major Drug Manufacturers industry, an industry with a PowerRating of 10.

Pfizer.

We've already looked at what industries with PowerRatings of 10 have performed. So let's look closer at the Long Term PowerRatings of these two stocks, both of which have PowerRatings of 8.

Johnson & Johnson

We found stocks that had Long Term PowerRatings of 8 were higher one year later more than 74% of the time, a reliability figure that still bests that of the average stock. In terms of performance, 8-rated stocks on average gained more than 18% after one year.

The last stock on our list is Altria Group (MO@MO | Quote | Chart | News | PowerRating). Like Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson, Altria Group has a Long Term PowerRating of 8. However, unlike those two stocks, Altria Group comes from an industry group, Cigarettes, with a decidedly average Industry PowerRating of 6.

Altria Group shares the top spot in the Cigarette industry group with Carolina Group (CG@CG | Quote | Chart | News | PowerRating), which also has a Long Term PowerRating of 8.

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David Penn is Senior Editor at PowerRatings.net.