Flex Stock Slides 27% Over 6 Straight Down Days

FLEXYTD+44.9%SPYYTD+13.0%QQQYTD+17.2%
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Flex stock is on a 6-day losing streak, down 26.9% since the run began. That erased about $11.8 billion from the company’s market value, which now stands at about $32.0 billion. The stock closed at $87.54 on Monday, October 19, 46.0% below its 52-week high of $162.07 and 60.6% above its low of $54.51.

Image from Pixabay

 
The Streak Next To The S&P 500

Returns for FLEX and the S&P 500 over the streak and the periods around it, all ending Monday, October 19 and including dividends:
 

Return Period FLEX S&P 500
1 Day -3.2% 0.4%
6 Days (Current Streak) -26.9% -1.5%
1 Month (21 Trading Days) -19.3% 0.6%
3 Months (63 Trading Days) -31.3% 2.7%
Year To Date 44.9% 13.4%
1 Year (252 Trading Days) 38.2% 17.4%

How The Streak Compares With The Market

Over the same 6 trading days, the S&P 500 returned -1.5% including dividends, so the slide is mostly Flex’s own story rather than the market’s. 6 other S&P 500 stocks are currently on losing streaks of 6 days or longer. Over the past three months the stock is down 31.3%, a window that includes the streak; over the other 57 sessions of that window it was down 5.9%.

Is The Business As Weak As The Stock?

On the fundamentals, revenue grew 12.2% over the last twelve months, against a median of 17.9% for S&P 500 Information Technology stocks; its operating margin is 5.2%, versus a median of 21.6%; and the stock trades at 32.9 times trailing earnings against a median of 34.2. The selling is hard to square with the fundamentals: a multiple below the median.

A slide like this raises an obvious follow-up: which marked-down stocks are actually worth buying? Our Buy the Dip screen runs that test every day, flagging beaten-down names whose fundamentals still hold up.

Weakness In One Name Should Be Noise, Not News

For a diversified holder, a streak like this is a data point. For a concentrated one, it is a hole in the plan. The difference is never the stock; it is the portfolio built around it.

Building that portfolio is what the Trefis High Quality (HQ) Portfolio does: roughly 30 businesses with the cash generation and balance-sheet strength to absorb a bad month, selected and rebalanced by rules. It has a track record of outpacing a benchmark that combines the S&P 500, the S&P MidCap 400, and the Russell 2000. Make the next streak, in either direction, someone else’s drama.