Back in early October I wrote in (
Oct 1: Nowhere to Run, Nowhere to Hide) how there simply was no asset class (ex US Treasuries and US Dollar), no sector, no country to hide in. Everything stunk, and in fact it got worse in the ensuing weeks. September, October, November 2008 might be the worst 3 months ever (I don't have the date) but if not, it has to be in the top 3.
We used to run a weekly screen here to identify areas of relative strength - it's been useless for months on end. But for curiousity sake I ran it to see the best performers over the past quarter.
Criteria
- Market capitalization $1.50B+
- Average trading volume 100K+
- Stock price $10+
- Return this quarter 0%+
I first set the variable for "% return for the quarter" at 25%, and received a whopping 2 results. Then I lowered it to 10% and that skyrocketed to... Finally I set it down to 0%... how many stocks with the following criteria actually did not lose money the past 90 days, and all it returned was 31 stocks. Here are your survivors.
Patterns? Only 1 - re-education of adult Americans was a hot sector - I shaded those in purple. All these unemployed Americans need to be retrained to do something productive (healthcare or federal government jobs seem to be the 2 places they can be fit into) Other than that, nothing. The #1 name is Fairfax Financial (FFH) which in my reading is apparently the Berkshire Hathaway of Canada. Only they made some great bets against subprime. There was a complete lack of buyouts which would be the companies that would normally fill the top slots of this type of ranking.
The oddity is Exxon Mobil (XOM) during a time oil fell off the cliff - but then again you can't market the market up with these last hour parlor tricks or buying futures in pre market as the PPT loves to do (allegedly) without pushing the largest company in the index up. So don't worry that just about every other energy related company lost 1/3rd to 2/3rds of its value this quarter - XOM is at the very top of the major indexes and thus is immune. It did better than Walmart or McDonald's in fact... oh my...
| Symbol |
Company Name |
% Price Change Last Qtr. |
Market Cap |
| FFH |
Fairfax Financial Holdings Ltd |
53.7 |
5,328,436,923 |
| UST |
UST Inc |
26.5 |
10,188,740,000 |
| WRB |
WR Berkley Corp |
18.9 |
4,431,008,000 |
| APOL |
Apollo Group Inc |
18.2 |
12,034,480,000 |
| ORH |
Odyssey Re Holdings Corp |
15.3 |
2,620,178,000 |
| GVA |
Granite Construction Inc |
14.0 |
1,580,223,000 |
| WTR |
Aqua America Inc |
11.0 |
2,682,996,000 |
| DCM |
NTT DoComo Sponsored ADR |
10.0 |
73,164,280,000 |
| DV |
DeVry Inc |
9.1 |
4,063,632,000 |
| IMCL |
ImClone Systems Inc |
8.6 |
6,218,729,000 |
| VRX |
Valeant Pharmaceuticals Int'l |
7.8 |
1,628,320,000 |
| STRA |
Strayer Education Inc |
7.6 |
3,260,895,000 |
| PNY |
Piedmont Natural Gas Inc |
7.0 |
2,288,493,000 |
| SMG |
Scotts Miracle Gro Co |
6.1 |
1,927,224,000 |
| NJR |
New Jersey Resources Corp |
5.7 |
1,618,257,000 |
| HANS |
Hansen Natural Corp |
5.3 |
2,602,873,000 |
| ADM |
Archer Daniels Midland Co |
4.9 |
16,755,310,000 |
| CXG |
CNX Gas Corp |
4.7 |
4,624,261,000 |
| NST |
NStar |
3.5 |
3,695,570,000 |
| WGL |
WGL Holdings Inc |
3.2 |
1,675,048,000 |
| RYAAY |
Ryanair Hldgs ADR |
3.2 |
7,388,317,000 |
| PHLY |
Philadelphia Consolidated Holding |
2.6 |
4,411,427,000 |
| HMY |
Harmony Gold Mining ADR |
2.4 |
3,294,583,000 |
| ASBC |
Associated Banc-Corp |
2.2 |
2,358,898,000 |
| GHL |
Greenhill & Co Inc |
1.6 |
1,863,612,000 |
| PBCT |
Peoples United Financial Inc |
1.6 |
6,256,541,000 |
| ALO |
Alpharma Inc |
1.1 |
1,940,573,000 |
| ESI |
ITT Educational Services Inc |
1.0 |
3,497,387,000 |
| FDO |
Family Dollar Stores Inc |
0.4 |
3,508,369,000 |
| XOM |
Exxon Mobil Corp |
0.4 |
394,774,800,000 |
| TFSL |
TFS Financial Corp |
0.2 |
3,797,558,000 |
