Top-ranked fast casual chain Chipotle Mexican Grill's Relative Strength (RS) Rating climbed to 82 Wednesday, up from 78. It recently broke out from a double-bottom base, although it hasn't moved up much yet. With the market in confirmed uptrend, Chipotle stock may have lots of room to run.
The raised 82 RS Rating confirms that the Newport Beach, Calif.-based chain tops 82% of all stocks for price performance over the past year. Research shows that the best-performing stocks typically have an 80 or higher RS Rating in the early stages of their moves.
Hard To Beat These Chipotle Stock Ratings
Among other ratings Chipotle stock has a perfect 99 Composite Rating, a combination of IBD's five other key ratings. It also boasts a near-perfect 98 Earnings Per Share Rating. And its B- Accumulation/Distribution Rating, on an A+ to E scale shows that big money investors like mutual funds are fairly heavy buyers.
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Chipotle Mexican Grill is still within a buying range after moving past a 1,638.43 entry in a double-bottom pattern on Jan. 31. The proper buying range extends to 5% above the initial entry, which would be about 1,720. On Wednesday, Chipotle rose 0.7%.
Profit Climbs 49%
Earnings jumped 49% on a year-over-year basis last quarter to a tasty $8.29 per share, on an 11% rise in revenue to $2.18 billion.
Chipotle stock earns the No. 1 rank among its peers in the Retail-Restaurants industry group. Full-service steak and ribs chain Texas Roadhouse and all-things-chicken especially wings chain Wingstop are Nos. 2 and 3 in the group, respectively.
IBD's proprietary RS Rating measures market leadership by showing how a stock's price action over the last 52 weeks measures up against that of other stocks on the major indexes.