Would Shareholders Who Purchased Hartford Financial Services Group's (NYSE:HIG) Stock Year Be Happy With The Share price Today?

It's easy to match the overall market return by buying an index fund. But if you buy individual stocks, you can do both better or worse than that. That downside risk was realized by The Hartford Financial Services Group, Inc. (NYSE:HIG) shareholders over the last year, as the share price declined 34%. That falls noticeably short of the market return of around 23%. To make matters worse, the returns over three years have also been really disappointing (the share price is 31% lower than three years ago). The good news is that the stock is up 2.8% in the last week.

Check out our latest analysis for Hartford Financial Services Group

To paraphrase Benjamin Graham: Over the short term the market is a voting machine, but over the long term it's a weighing machine. One imperfect but simple way to consider how the market perception of a company has shifted is to compare the change in the earnings per share (EPS) with the share price movement.

During the unfortunate twelve months during which the Hartford Financial Services Group share price fell, it actually saw its earnings per share (EPS) improve by 11%. It could be that the share price was previously over-hyped.

It's fair to say that the share price does not seem to be reflecting the EPS growth. But we might find some different metrics explain the share price movements better.

Hartford Financial Services Group's revenue is actually up 6.2% over the last year. Since we can't easily explain the share price movement based on these metrics, it might be worth considering how market sentiment has changed towards the stock.

You can see below how earnings and revenue have changed over time (discover the exact values by clicking on the image).

We consider it positive that insiders have made significant purchases in the last year. Even so, future earnings will be far more important to whether current shareholders make money. You can see what analysts are predicting for Hartford Financial Services Group in this interactive graph of future profit estimates.

A Different Perspective

Investors in Hartford Financial Services Group had a tough year, with a total loss of 32% (including dividends), against a market gain of about 23%. However, keep in mind that even the best stocks will sometimes underperform the market over a twelve month period. Unfortunately, last year's performance may indicate unresolved challenges, given that it was worse than the annualised loss of 1.7% over the last half decade. Generally speaking long term share price weakness can be a bad sign, though contrarian investors might want to research the stock in hope of a turnaround. If you want to research this stock further, the data on insider buying is an obvious place to start. You can click here to see who has been buying shares - and the price they paid.

Hartford Financial Services Group is not the only stock that insiders are buying. For those who like to find winning investments this free list of growing companies with recent insider purchasing, could be just the ticket.

Please note, the market returns quoted in this article reflect the market weighted average returns of stocks that currently trade on US exchanges.

This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. We aim to bring you long-term focused analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Simply Wall St has no position in any stocks mentioned.

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