The NFL season kicks off Thursday when the Atlanta Falcons battle the Philadelphia Eagles. I’ll be watching – not just because I’m a longtime football fan and because I participate in a fantasy football league, writes Mike Larson. He's presenting at MoneyShow Toronto.

That means either I or some of the other team captains will have their players participating in several games per week, including that one.

If you’ve ever played fantasy sports, you know that ratings and rankings are key. They help you figure out which players to draft, which to start in any given week, and which you can safely drop in favor of better options.

The same is true about stocks and other investments – simply because there are so darn many to choose from!

Consider this: At Weiss Ratings, we grade and issue ratings on more than 9,600 stocks. We also rate more than 1,900 ETFs and almost 28,000 mutual funds.

If you elected to spend just five minutes evaluating that many investments on your own, it would take you a whopping 136 days to figure out which are good Buys. That’s more than a third of a year – a long stretch of time during which the underlying fundamentals would constantly be changing anyway.

So, you need some way of thinning the herd. You need a way to narrow down the universe of potential investments, just like a good fantasy football manager needs to narrow down the universe of potential players to put on his or her team.

That’s where our Weiss Ratings come in handy! Our system grades thousands of stocks, ETFs, and mutual funds as Sells – “D+” or lower. Thousands more fall into the Hold category – “C+” through “C-”.

Only a much smaller universe receives Buy ratings of “B-” or higher. That means you can use our ratings to narrow your focus, to give you a much more manageable starting-off point for your own investment research.

Or if you want to get even more granular, you can use our Weiss Ratings Screeners to add additional criteria to your search. It’s like narrowing down your fantasy football waiver wire player search to only running backs who averaged at least 70 yards per game last year and who are typically targeted at least 10 times each week.

I’ve been talking a lot about “Safe Money” stocks lately, for instance. So, in that vein, I screened for all U.S.-based stocks in the consumer staples, real estate, and utilities sectors. I further narrowed the list down to only Buy-rated stocks with a positive year-to-date return, which I sorted in descending order by Weiss Rating.

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Data date: September 4, 2018

A total of 125 stocks made the cut. At the top of the list were the hotel and resort owner Ryman Hospitality Properties (RHP), the wholesale restaurant and food service supplier Sysco Corp. (SYY), and the food and beverage maker Pinnacle Foods (PF).

All three have generated very impressive YTD returns, with RHP and SYY topping the list at 30.6% and 25.8% respectively. That compares to only 9.8% for the SPDR S&P 500 ETF (SPY). They all sport better dividend yields than the SPY’s 1.75%, too.

Now I’m not saying you should rush out and buy each and every stock on this list today. Timing is important, as is additional research. After I run an initial candidate screen each month for my Weiss Ratings’ Safe Money Report, I narrow the list down further through my own additional legwork (You can subscribe here to get my recommendations if you’re interested).

But you can clearly see how the methodical, prudent utilization of rankings and ratings can help turn a gigantic pool of prospective investments into a much more manageable one. I highly recommend you use them – whether in the investment selection process or in setting your fantasy team roster each week.

Until next time,

Mike Larson

Join me at the MoneyShow Toronto Sept. 14-15. You can see my speaking schedule, and get registered for free by clicking here.

Check out Mike’s short video interview, Conservative Stock Picks for 2018 at MoneyShow Las Vegas here.

Duration: 3:33
Recorded: May 14, 2018

Check out Mike’s short video interview What Investors Are Doing Wrong and How to Fix It at MoneyShow Las Vegas here:

Duration: 2:22
Recorded: May 14, 2018.