Eagle Bulk Shipping recently bought a high-specification, Ultramax bulk carrier ship for $24.3 million. If you ask the company though, it's liable to say that it's no big deal. Eagle Bulk Shipping already owns one of the biggest fleets of supramax/ultramax ships in the world, 54 ships to be exact. And on Tuesday the Relative Strength Rating for Eagle Bulk stock topped a key benchmark, rising to 81 from 76 the day before.
The upgraded 81 RS Rating puts Eagle Bulk stock among the top 20% of all stocks in terms of price performance over the past 12 months. The new rating has added significance because research shows that top-performing stocks often have an RS Rating north of 80 as they launch their biggest climbs.
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Eagle Bulk Stock Popular With Big Money Investors
Among other key ratings, Eagle Bulk stock has a decent 78 Composite Rating and a strong B Accumulation/Distribution Rating, on an A+ to E scale. The B A/D Rating shows that big money investors such as insurance company funds and ETFs are fairly heavy buyers of its stock.
One yellow flag for the Stamford, Ct.-based company is its 55 Earnings Per Share Rating. That's in part the result of the war in Ukraine. In the first quarter of 2021 Eagle Bulk's earnings soared more than 1,000% year over year. Then it posted EPS gains of 396%, 89% and last quarter a miserly 1%. Look to see whether it returns to growth when the shipper reports Q4 2022 results the morning of March 3.
Russia's invasion of Ukraine and resulting sanctions by Western nations resulted in drastically reduced flows of oil and gas from Russia. Eagle Bulk benefited from huge shipments of American oil and gas to Europe to help it avoid a winter shortage. Eagle stock more than doubled from a mid-December 2021 intraday low 36.21 to 78.75 on June 6, 2022. It turned out Europe was able to meet its winter needs with oil and gas shipped from America and other countries, and Eagle's shipments eased.
Looking For Fresh Pattern To Form
Eagle Bulk Stock is now considered extended and out of buy range after clearing a 52.16 buy point in a second-stage cup without handle. See if the stock forms a new pattern or follow-on buying opportunity like a three-weeks-tight pattern or pulls back to the 50-day or 10-week moving average. On Tuesday Eagle Bulk stock edged up fractionally.
Eagle Bulk Stock earns the No. 8 rank among its peers in the Transportation-Ship industry group. Kirby and Global Ship Lease are also among the group's highest-rated stocks.
When you're researching the best stocks to buy and watch, one metric to watch is relative price strength. IBD's exclusive Relative Strength Rating identifies share price performance with a 1 (worst) to 99 (best) score. The rating shows how a stock's price movement over the last 52 weeks holds up against all the other stocks in our database.
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