Some value U.S. stocks that could outperform the volatility + MORE Mar 25th

Watch for earnings, budgets and a key Canadian economic indicator

Prospects are looking brighter in the Canadian oilpatch as commodity price increases drive higher profits and afford companies room to offer dividend hikes and share buybacks — but slumping stock prices show that the oil and gas sector remains in the penalty box with investors.

Shot of young friends riding roller coaster ride at amusement park. Young people having fun at amusement park.
With a rocky start to Q1, the S&P500 has certainly shown some volatility in recent months, as evidenced by the orange line of the S&P 500 Composite against its moving averages over the last 18 months, below:

Despite this, on a trailing 12 month basis, the index still maintains a positive 17.1% total return. For investors who believe that the general trend of the market will continue in the positive direction, the recent volatility may provide an opportunity to find some value focused names with a long-term growth trajectory. To find these names, I used Morningstar CPMS to rank stocks on the following factors:

5 year Normalized EPS growth rate (this measures on average, how much earnings have grown each year in the last 5 years)
Deviation of EPS over 5 years (a risk metric that measures how stable companies earnings have been over the trailing 5 years, lower figures preferred)
Median Estimated EPS Growth Rate (how much analysts are expecting earnings to grow in the upcoming fiscal year)

To qualify in our strategy, companies must have Price to Earnings, Price to Book, and Price to Sales ratios less than the median of the sector to which it belongs…