Of the 500 stocks that make up the S&P 500 (a better indicator of broad stock market values than the Dow Jones Industrials), only 16 are up for the year to date. They are:
1. Family Dollar, up 40 percent. Cheap goods sell better this year.
2. Rohm & Haas, up 35 percent. All-cash takeover by Dow Chemical is pending. Since the deal was announced in July, Dow is down 40 percent. This may be the worst-timed deal of the year from the buyer’s perspective.
3. Anheuser Busch, up 31 percent. Another cash takeover. That deal was completed today, so Busch won’t be around to help the full-year breadth numbers.
4. Celgene, up 27 percent. A biotechnology stock has been helped by test failure of drug from competitor.
5. UST, up 25 percent. Snuff leader being bought by Altria, the cigarette company, again for cash.
6. Barr Pharmaceutical, up 22 percent. Generic drug maker won patent fight.
7. Amgen, up 21 percent. Drug performs well in tests.
8. Hudson City Bancorp, up 15 percent. A bank is up? This bank, based in New Jersey, kept good underwriting standards and stayed out of the securitization game. It also failed to expand into formerly hot markets like California and Florida. Now it has turned down bailout cash, saying it did not need the money.
9. General Mills, up 15 percent. You have to eat, and Wheaties maker is doing well.
10. Southwestern Energy, up 12 percent. Gas company rode prices up, and has not given up all its gains.The others that are up are Wal-Mart (9 percent), Campbell Soup (5 percent), Cephalon (3 percent), People’s United (3 percent), Kroger (less than 1 percent), and Baxter International (less than 1 percent).
Some 200 of the 500 stocks have lost half or more of their value since the end of last year.
Source: Floyd Norris Blog – NYTimes.com
Here’s a list of the 500 stocks that make up the index.