As we exit the worst January ever, I thought it would be interesting to take a look at the best performers of the past month. Before we do, courtesy of
Dshort.com this is a chart that has been passed around a lot in the investing community so I thought I'd share it. Two ways to read this - of the 4 great bear markets the past 100 years, 3 "ended" roughly where we are now... about a 50% loss in value from peak. That's the bullish view i.e. "can't get worse than this" and if we fall to S&P 750 (November lows) but never break through they will be correct.
The bearish view is - the 4th bear market ended in a 90% drop, and if you plot the velocity of the decline, what happened to us in
Sep - Nov caused us to be in lockstep with the worst of the 4. I'm not calling for a 90% drop from top to bottom but I believe we'll have a great chance of hitting something closer to 60% then 50% from peak to trough.
Remember what the pundits told you at the end of 2008 (30 days ago) ... time to buy, the calendar is changing and hence its a new start; change is coming, optimism is in the air, stimulus... after a 40% drop in 2008 we cannot just continue to fall. Blah blah & blah. Then January happened. Once again, the punditry just serves to act as sirens and have been destroying people's capital left & right. When we return to a bull market it won't be 45 days or 90 days in duration... there will be plenty of time to partake. While it would be beautiful to catch "the turn" when it really happens, so many people have lost so much money trying to catch it that they won't have the capital to enjoy the actual rebound. Until then, it is best to have much tigher leashes, much shorter time frames and focus on small wins.
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Before the era when the stock market fluctuated +/-8% every month or indeed week, we used to post the best performers of the week to get an idea where the relative strength in the market was. Nowadays, the data is useless as one week every financial will be down 30% and the next week, they'll all be up 20% - which tells us nothing for our time frame.
For the screen, I've had to bring the market capitalization criteria down substantially - before we used to use $1.75-$2 Billion as a minimum. But so many stocks have cratered, I've dropped it down to $500 Million for this pass. 54 Stocks made the cut of making at least 15% in January so while the winning ranks were thin; there were some. Keep in mind, many of these stocks were obliterated late in 2008 so instead of showing "strength" many are just reverting to a mean.
Criteria
- Market capitalization $500M+
- Average trading volume 100K+
- Stock price $10+
- Return this month 15%+
Green names we own,
blue names we have owned in the past or discussed in the blog. Quite a few at the top are takeovers. The main trend I see were
refiners were, after a year of disarray, finally rebounding a bit. A handful of our old
energy stocks (HK, FTI) also made a re-emergence but I think this is more oversold action than a new trend so it doesn't fit our time frame. Also,
adult "re-education" stocks as we've highlighted have been all the rage - although we successfully booked a profit shorting
ITT Educational (ESI) (
Jan 22: Bookkeeping: Short ITT Educational) Overall, I am not sure there is much to glean here other than "congrats" if you happened to own some entering the year. I am surprised at the lack of silver/gold stocks on the list...
| Symbol |
Company Name |
% Price Change Last Month |
| EYE |
Advanced Medical Optics Inc |
219.8 |
| CVTX |
CV Therapeutics Inc |
70.1 |
| NTCT |
NetScout Systems Inc |
54.7 |
| WNR |
Western Refining Inc |
43.1 |
| SYNA |
Synaptics Inc |
38.7 |
| SEPR |
Sepracor Inc |
34.3 |
| RIMM |
Research In Motion Ltd |
33.0 |
| MWE |
MarkWest Energy Partners L P |
31.0 |
| ESI |
ITT Educational Services Inc |
29.9 |
| SNX |
SYNNEX Corp |
29.9 |
| HNT |
Health Net Inc |
28.0 |
| IWOV |
Interwoven Inc |
27.7 |
| SLM |
SLM Corp |
26.2 |
| CYH |
Community Health Systems Inc |
26.2 |
| MDVN |
Medivation Inc |
26.0 |
| SPR |
Spirit Aerosystems Holdings Inc |
25.8 |
| HOC |
Holly Corp |
25.1 |
| TSO |
Tesoro Corp |
25.0 |
| NRGY |
Inergy LP |
24.9 |
| NAV |
Navistar International Ord Shs |
24.3 |
| CREE |
Cree Inc |
23.7 |
| ALJ |
Alon USA Energy Inc |
23.2 |
| IOC |
InterOil Corp |
22.9 |
| STAR |
Starent Networks Corp |
22.6 |
| NJ |
NIDEC Corp Depository Receipt |
22.2 |
| WPZ |
Williams Partners LP |
21.9 |
| SGR |
Shaw Group Inc |
21.8 |
| CECO |
Career Education Corp |
21.8 |
| NFLX |
Netflix Inc |
21.0 |
| KCI |
Kinetic Concepts Inc |
20.4 |
| SVR |
Syniverse Hldg Inc |
20.4 |
| ACOR |
Acorda Therapeutics Inc |
20.0 |
| IVC |
Invacare Corp |
19.9 |
| NRP |
Natural Resource Partners Units |
19.8 |
| AMMD |
American Medical Systems |
19.7 |
| VPRT |
VistaPrint Ltd |
19.5 |
| MS |
Morgan Stanley |
19.1 |
| WDC |
Western Digital Corp |
19.1 |
| SSRI |
Silver Standard Resources Inc |
19.1 |
| HK |
Petrohawk Energy Corp |
19.0 |
| IHS |
Information Handling Services Inc |
19.0 |
| IMA |
Inverness Medical Innovations Inc |
18.7 |
| CPNO |
Copano Energy LLC |
18.0 |
| SVU |
SUPERVALU INC |
17.9 |
| TPP |
TEPPCO Partners LP |
17.7 |
| FTI |
FMC Technologies Inc |
16.9 |
| ARO |
Aeropostale Inc |
16.6 |
| IDCC |
InterDigital Inc |
16.3 |
| OTEX |
Open Text Corp |
16.0 |
| SIRO |
Sirona Dental Systems Inc |
15.9 |
| NTY |
NBTY Inc |
15.8 |
| COCO |
Corinthian Colleges Inc |
15.7 |
| CSTR |
Coinstar Inc |
15.5 |
| TRA |
Terra Industries Inc |
15.2 |
