It doesn't matter if you're a growth, value, income, or momentum-focused investor -- building a successful investment portfolio takes skill, research, and a little bit of luck.
How do you find the right combination of stocks that will generate returns that could fund your retirement, or your kids' college tuition, or your short- and long-term savings goals?
Enter the Zacks Rank.
What is the Zacks Rank?
A unique, proprietary stock-rating model, the Zacks Rank uses earnings estimate revisions, or changes to a company's earnings expectations, to help investors create a winning portfolio.
There are four main factors behind the Zacks Rank: Agreement, Magnitude, Upside, and Surprise.
Agreement is the extent to which all brokerage analysts are revising their earnings estimates in the same direction. The greater the percentage of analysts revising their estimates higher, the better chance the stock will outperform.
Magnitude is the size of the recent change in the consensus estimate for the current and next fiscal years.
Upside is the difference between the most accurate estimate, which is calculated by Zacks, and the consensus estimate.
Surprise is made up of a company's last few quarters' earnings per share surprises; companies with a positive earnings surprise are more likely to beat expectations in the future.
These four factors are assigned a raw score that's recalculated every night, which is then compiled into the ranking system. Stocks are classified into five groups using this data, ranging from "Strong Buy" to "Strong Sell."
The Power of Institutional Investors
The Zacks Rank also allows individual investors, or retail investors, to benefit from the power of institutional investors.
These professionals manage the trillions of dollars invested in hedge funds, mutual funds, and investment banks, and studies have shown that they can and do move the market because of the large amounts of money they invest with. Thus, the market tends to move in the same direction as institutional investors.
These investors are known for designing valuation models that focus on earnings and earnings expectations in order to figure out the fair value of a company and its shares. If earnings estimates are raised, it puts a higher value on a company.
With these changes, institutional investors will act, usually buying stocks with rising estimates and selling those with falling estimates. An increase in earnings expectations can potentially lead to higher stock prices and bigger gains for the investor.
Since it can often take weeks, if not months, for an institutional investor to build a position (given their size), retail investors who get in at the first sign of upward earnings estimate revisions have a distinct advantage over these larger investors, and can benefit from the expected institutional buying that will follow.
Not only can the Zacks Rank help you take advantage of trends in earnings estimate revisions, but it can also provide a way to get into stocks that are highly sought after by professionals.
How to Invest with the Zacks Rank
The Zacks Rank is known for transforming investment portfolios. In fact, a portfolio of Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy) stocks has beaten the market in 26 of the last 32 years, with an average annual return of +23.75%.
Moreover, stocks with a new #1 (Strong Buy) ranking have some of the biggest profit potential, while those that fell to a #4 (Sell) or #5 (Strong Sell) have some of the worst.
Let's take a look at Axon Enterprise (AXON), which was added to the Zacks Rank #1 list on August 5, 2025. Headquartered in Scottsdale, AZ, Axon. develops and manufactures weapons for selling to U.S. state and local governments, the U.S. federal government, international government customers and commercial enterprises. Focused on global public safety, Axon’s suite of products includes conducted energy devices, body-worn cameras, in-car cameras, cloud-hosted digital evidence management solutions, productivity software and real-time operations capabilities. The company generates the majority of its revenues through direct sales, including its online store. Axon faces strong competition in both its hardware and software markets from companies like Motorola Solutions, Panasonic, IBM and others. On a geographical basis, the company has operations in the United States (85% of 2024 net sales) and other international markets (15%).
Two analysts revised their earnings estimate higher in the last 60 days for fiscal 2025, while the Zacks Consensus Estimate has increased $0.1 to $6.44 per share. AXON also boasts an average earnings surprise of 25.9%.
Earnings are expected to grow 8.4% for the current fiscal year, while revenue is projected to increase 30.2%.
AXON has been moving higher over the past four weeks as well, up 7.2% compared to the S&P 500's gain of 1.2%.
Bottom Line
With a #1 (Strong Buy) ranking, positive trend in earnings estimate revisions, and strong market momentum, Axon Enterprise should be on investors' shortlist.
If you want even more information on the Zacks Ranks, or one of our many other investing strategies, check out the Zacks Education home page.
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Axon Enterprise, Inc (AXON): Free Stock Analysis ReportThis article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com).
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