News

The following are today's upgrades for Validea's Growth Investor model based on the published strategy of Martin Zweig. This strategy looks for growth stocks with persistent accelerating earnings and sales growth, reasonable valuations and low debt.

ASSURANT, INC. (AIZ) is a mid-cap value stock in the Insurance (Prop. & Casualty) industry. The rating according to our strategy based on Martin Zweig changed from 77% to 85% based on the firm’s underlying fundamentals and the stock’s valuation. A score of 80% or above typically indicates that the strategy has some interest in the stock and a score above 90% typically indicates strong interest.

Company Description: Assurant, Inc. is a global provider of lifestyle and housing solutions that support, protect, and connects consumer purchases. The Company operates in North America, Latin America, Europe, and Asia Pacific through two segments: Global Lifestyle and Global Housing. The Global Lifestyle segment provides mobile device solutions and extended service products and related services for mobile devices, consumer electronics and appliances (Connected Living); vehicle protection and related services (Global Automotive); and credit protection and other insurance products (Global Financial Services and Other). The Global Housing segment provides lender-placed homeowners insurance, lender-placed manufactured housing insurance and lender-placed flood insurance (Lender-placed Insurance); renters insurance and related products (Multifamily Housing); and voluntary manufactured housing insurance, voluntary homeowners insurance and other specialty products (Specialty and Other).

The following table summarizes whether the stock meets each of this strategy's tests. Not all criteria in the below table receive equal weighting or are independent, but the table provides a brief overview of the strong and weak points of the security in the context of the strategy's criteria.

Detailed Analysis of ASSURANT, INC.

About Martin Zweig: During the 15 years that it was monitored, Zweig's stock recommendation newsletter returned an average of 15.9 percent per year, during which time it was ranked number one based on risk-adjusted returns by Hulbert Financial Digest. Zweig has managed both mutual and hedge funds during his career, and he's put the fortune he's compiled to some interesting uses. He has owned what Forbes reported was the most expensive apartment in New York, a $70 million penthouse that sits atop Manhattan's Pierre Hotel, and he is a collector of all sorts of pop culture and historical memorabilia -- among his purchases are the gun used by Clint Eastwood in "Dirty Harry", a stock certificate signed by Commodore Vanderbilt, and even two old-fashioned gas pumps similar to those he'd seen at a nearby gas station while growing up in Cleveland, according to published reports.

About Validea: Validea is aninvestment researchservice that follows the published strategies of investment legends. Validea offers both stock analysis and model portfolios based on gurus who have outperformed the market over the long-term, including Warren Buffett, Benjamin Graham, Peter Lynch and Martin Zweig. For more information about Validea, click here

The views and opinions expressed herein are the views and opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Nasdaq, Inc.