Stock Spotlight: Arbitron Inc.

A number of stocks made our Today's Top Rated Stocks list as of yesterday's close and among them is one stock, Arbitron Inc. (ARB@ARB | Quote | Chart | News | PowerRating), that has all the qualities we look for in stocks that we highlight for active investors as part of our weekly Featured Stock Spotlight.

Those qualities, by the way, are few but critical as far as we are concerned. First, a featured stock has to be a good - if not great - stock. This is why all of the stocks featured as part of our Stock Spotlight have Long Term PowerRatings of 9 or 10.

Our research into what separates the most reliable and best performing stocks from the rest of the stock universe indicates that stocks with Long Term PowerRatings of 9 or 10 have not only been higher one year later more than 79% of the time. These "best of breed" high PowerRatings stocks also have outperformed the average stock, with gains of more than 18% being the average in a year's time - compared with 12-13% for the average stock.

Arbitron's Long Term PowerRating of 9 puts it squarely in this camp of outperformance.

There is another factor that we like to focus on when it comes to featured stocks, and that membership in a strong industry group. We rate industry groups the same way we rate stocks: relying on our proprietary PowerRatings to separate the great opportunities from the merely good (or worse, mediocre).

In this Arbitron also shines. Arbitron is a member of the Research Services industry group, an industry with a Industry PowerRating of 10. As with stocks, a PowerRating of 10 for an industry group is our top rating, and signifies an area that is likely to be especially fruitful for active investors looking for quality stocks.

Arbitron Inc.

Specifically, we found that industry groups with Industry PowerRatings of 10 produced average annualized returns of more than 35% in historical testing between 1995 and 2007. This is more than double the average annualized return of the average industry group. Clearly, with stocks as it is with real estate, location matters. And the more stocks in your investment portfolio that are "located" in high PowerRating industries, the better your portfolio is likely to perform.

Arbitron is a media and marketing information services company that provides data for radio, cable television, and a variety of advertisers. Arbitron's chief business is in tracking and measuring network and local-market radio audiences, as well as consumer patterns of those audiences.

Arbitron's stock is within five points of its 52-week high of $55.63, and has a modest dividend yield of 0.80.

Looking for more long-term solutions to your investing problems? Don't let the volatility of this market lead you to miss out on stocks you'll be glad to have bought a year from now.

Learn what you need to know as an active investor looking to invest in companies with a history of financial strength and a track record for growth. Click the link above or call us at 888-484-8220 extension 1 to get your copy of the "5 Secrets to Successful Stock Investing" today!

David Penn is Senior Editor of PowerRatings.net.