Where The Selling Ran Deepest: 4 S&P 500 Stocks At 52-Week Lows
A technology giant’s sharp slide highlights the tension between market price and business performance.
The weakness on Wednesday was scattered, with IT Consulting, Automotive Retail, and Diversified Support Services each placing one name on the new-lows list. In total, 4 S&P 500 stocks are trading at their 52-week lows.
The largest company is International Business Machines (IBM), with a market value of about $198.2 billion. Its stock has declined 22.4% over the last month, a period when the S&P 500 returned +1.8%. This raises a critical question: what does it mean when a company’s stock price hits a new low while its underlying business is still expanding? The full list of names follows.
Wednesday’s Full 52-Week-Low List
The table below lists every stock at its 52-week low, largest first, with one-day, one-week, one-month, and one-year returns:
| Tickers | Market Cap |
1D % Chg |
1W % Chg |
1M % Chg |
1Y % Chg |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| IBM | $198.2 Bil | -2.7% | -30.1% | -22.4% | -23.7% |
| ORLY | $69.4 Bil | -3.5% | -2.6% | -9.1% | -11.2% |
| CPRT | $25.5 Bil | -0.9% | -4.6% | -11.3% | -42.1% |
| PNR | $10.5 Bil | -15.0% | -12.2% | -12.8% | -39.1% |
When does a new low meet a growing business?
International Business Machines (IBM) stands out for this very reason. The stock’s 22.4% one-month slide is the steepest on the list, yet its revenue grew 9.7% over the last twelve months. The company trades at 18.4 times trailing earnings and generates a free cash flow yield of 6.2%.
Another name on the list, Pentair (PNR), shows a similar pattern. It trades at 15.6 times trailing earnings while its revenue grew 3.1% over the last twelve months.
A 52-week-low list is a starting point, not a conclusion.
A stock arrives at its weakest price of the last year for a reason. The key is to distinguish between a permanently damaged operation and a temporarily marked-down business whose fundamentals remain intact. A disciplined investor uses a list like this not as a signal to buy or sell, but as a prompt to check the underlying business before reacting to the price.
If any of these names tempt you, resist buying a price alone. Our Buy the Dip screen asks the follow-up question that matters: which marked-down stocks still have the growth and cash generation to recover.
A 52 Week Low Is A Stress Test For Concentrated Portfolios
Every stock on this list just showed its holders what a bad year feels like. How much damage any single position could do to your net worth is a question with a precise answer. The Trefis Wealth team computes it for investors professionally, with the same rules-based systematic discipline that runs our High Quality Portfolio. Request a free vulnerability audit of your biggest positions.