Give FICO some credit

A lot has happened in the last few years and one of the biggest changes for a lot of people has been their credit scores.  People who previously never were refused a credit card are finding their cards cancelled and the limits on the ones they've been able to keep current having the limits lowered.  Even households that have never missed a payment are finding the new and tightened underwriting standards means a much larger down payment on houses and autos.

Credit mismanagement and credit fraud are at a all time high and businesses need very current information on any new customer that isn't a COD transaction.  As the economy recovers businesses will need to know which of their new customers is a safe account.  That's where Fair Isaac (FICO) comes in.  We even now have FICO scores a term in almost all of our vocabularies,

Your FICO score may not be increasing but the price of their stock sure is:

Fair Isaac Corporation (FICO) makes decisions smarter. The company's solutions and technologies for Enterprise Decision Management give businesses the power to automate more processes, and apply more intelligence to every customer interaction. Through increasing the precision, consistency and agility of their decisions, Fair Isaac clients worldwide increase sales, build customer value, cut fraud losses, manage credit risk, reduce operational costs, meet changing compliance demands and enter new markets more profitably. Fair Isaac powers hundreds of billions of decisions each year in financial services, insurance, telecommunications, retail, consumer branded goods, health care and the public sector.

Reasons this stock should be on your watch lists:

Technical Factors:

• 100% Barchart technical buy signal
• Trend Spotter buy signal
• 7 new highs and up 10.91% in the last month
• Relative Strength Index is 71.88% and rising
• Trades around 31.05 with a 50 day moving average of 26.85

Fundamental Factors:

• For a company that touches the lives of almost every consumer in the US the stock is very under followed on Wall Street.
• Wall Street brokerage analysts only have 1 buy and 5 hold recommendations published
• Sales are expected to increase 3.10% this year and 3.40% next year -- almost in line with economic forecasts
• Earnings are projected to increase by 24.10% this year, 8.90% next year and 7.27 annually for the next 5 years
• Northland Securities has recently been high on this stock

General Investor Sentiment:

• Just like the professional analysts this is not a widely followed stock by the general investing public
• The CAPS members on Motley Fool vote 73 to 25 that the stock will beat the market -- That's 3 to 1 but not a large following
• The more experienced All Stars agree 28 to 12.

If you're looking for an S&P 400 stock trading around 300K shares a day Fair Isaac (FICO) is one that has a product that is essential to the  consumer credit market and is the standard for the industry.  Add it to your watch lists.

Jim Van Meerten is an analyst for  Marketocracy Capital Management.  He shares his knowledge and experience from over 40 years of investing in stocks, mutual funds and ETFs on Barchart.com  in his daily blog -- Barchart Portfolio Blogs.