Submitted By Trader Mark
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 6... 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 mark 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
Did you like this article?
|
's
