The 52-Week-High List: 23 S&P 500 Names On Monday
A new list of market leaders is anchored by financial giants, but the valuations underneath tell very different stories.
Strength in today’s 52-week-high list is concentrated in Oil & Gas Refining & Marketing, which leads with 3 names. As of Monday, August 10, a total of 23 S&P 500 stocks are trading at their strongest price of the last year.
The list is anchored by giants, including Berkshire Hathaway (BRK-B) with a market value of about $1142.1 billion. This raises a central question: are these new highs built on established business performance, or has the price run ahead of the fundamentals? The names below tell different stories.
The Biggest Names On The List
The table below shows the 10 largest of the 23 names, sorted by market capitalization, with returns over four windows:
| Tickers | Market Cap |
1D % Chg |
1W % Chg |
1M % Chg |
1Y % Chg |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| BRK-B | $1,142.1 Bil | 1.5% | 3.2% | 7.2% | 14.7% |
| JPM | $977.3 Bil | 0.6% | 2.0% | 6.9% | 27.8% |
| BAC | $463.4 Bil | 1.1% | 2.2% | 7.0% | 45.3% |
| PANW | $308.4 Bil | 5.8% | 10.9% | 18.1% | 129.1% |
| RTX | $302.7 Bil | 0.5% | 3.4% | 14.4% | 46.2% |
| AMGN | $225.3 Bil | 1.5% | 10.1% | 14.8% | 50.9% |
| ABNB | $110.5 Bil | 3.7% | 22.6% | 24.3% | 53.9% |
| GD | $107.0 Bil | 1.0% | 3.5% | 5.6% | 28.9% |
| MPC | $94.5 Bil | 7.4% | 4.3% | 12.9% | 102.2% |
| VLO | $93.9 Bil | 5.6% | 2.4% | 12.6% | 142.6% |
A high price can mean very different things for the underlying business.
Consider Palo Alto Networks (PANW), which trades at 365.9 times trailing earnings. Its revenue grew 19.5% over the last twelve months, with an operating margin of 9.6%. Contrast that with Berkshire Hathaway (BRK-B), which also made the list. It trades at 13.3 times trailing earnings while its revenue grew 10.4% over the last twelve months.
A 52-week high is a starting point for research, not a conclusion.
A stock at its strongest price of the last year is a sign of market approval, and strength can persist. But a price is not a verdict on the business itself. The disciplined approach is to treat this list as a screen, asking whether a company’s revenue growth, margins, and earnings power justify the new valuation the market has assigned it.
Before chasing any name on this list, ask what the company itself expects next. Our Guidance Momentum screen surfaces the stocks whose managements just raised their own outlooks, which is the momentum that tends to have staying power.
New Highs Fade. Discipline Compounds
Some of the names on this list will keep setting highs for years, and some are at the top of their run right now. Sorting one from the other, name by name, every day, is the work most investors never keep up with.
That sorting is what the Trefis High Quality (HQ) Portfolio does systematically: about 30 quality businesses screened for the fundamentals that sustain a run, held with rules instead of excitement. It has a track record of outpacing a benchmark that combines the three major indices – the S&P 500, S&P Mid-cap, and Russell 2000. Use the high list for ideas; use the portfolio for the compounding.