Analyst Rankings: Increased Payments a Plus, Nurse Shortage a Minus for Hospital Stocks

This week, in our focus on the winning analysts in each industry category from our Analyst Rankings -- Equity 2000, we profile the top analysts tracking health care facilities. Next week we'll look at automobiles. (Our last focus was on health care distributors and services.)

Health care facilities stocks had an outstanding year in 2000, with the group outperforming the S&P 500 by more than 72 percentage points. All three of our top-ranked analysts hold a positive outlook for the sector, though none expect a repeat of last year's returns. ...