15 Large Cap Stocks Just Made New 52-Week Highs
A new high for a stock is not a finish line, but a starting point for new questions.
The Pharmaceuticals industry placed 4 names on today’s list of 15 Large Cap US and Canada-listed stocks trading at their 52-week highs. This screen only considers companies with a market value above $40 billion. Visa (V), the largest of them with a market value of about $694.5 billion, reached its high on a 6.2% gain over the last month. The central question is what kind of business performance supports these new price levels.
The 10 largest of these names are below.
The 10 Largest, By Market Cap
The table below shows the 10 largest of the 15 names, sorted by market capitalization, with returns over four windows:
| Tickers | Market Cap |
1D % Chg |
1W % Chg |
1M % Chg |
1Y % Chg |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| V | $694.53 Bil | 0.5% | 5.5% | 6.2% | 10.6% |
| JNJ | $657.56 Bil | 0.5% | 1.2% | 3.2% | 56.9% |
| MRK | $386.74 Bil | 3.8% | 15.7% | 19.6% | 85.1% |
| VZ | $211.3 Bil | 0.2% | 3.5% | 6.2% | 20.8% |
| SCCO | $180.53 Bil | 2.5% | 17.0% | 23.2% | 130.3% |
| PFE | $162.59 Bil | 2.1% | 4.8% | 15.8% | 18.1% |
| NEM | $143.92 Bil | 2.5% | 16.5% | 44.6% | 93.0% |
| VRTX | $140.48 Bil | 1.0% | 4.7% | 15.4% | 39.9% |
| BMY | $138.42 Bil | 1.0% | 2.8% | 8.6% | 48.5% |
| FCX | $114.99 Bil | 2.7% | 20.5% | 27.4% | 86.6% |
Which highs are built on business growth?
Consider Merck (MRK), which gained 19.6% over the last month. It now trades at 121.8 times trailing earnings (on trailing earnings that include at least one loss quarter, so the multiple is not comparable to a clean-year multiple). Its revenue grew 4.6% over the last twelve months.
Contrast that with Southern Copper (SCCO). The stock trades at 32.2 times trailing earnings, while its revenue grew 32.8% over the last twelve months. The company’s operating margin is 56.9%.
A high price is a question, not an answer.
A list of stocks at their strongest prices of the past year is a useful map of where money has been moving. Strength often persists. But a price is not a verdict on a company, and a new high is not by itself a reason to buy.
The disciplined move is to treat the price as a prompt to check the work. A business whose fundamentals are growing into its valuation is a different story from one whose price has simply run ahead of its numbers.
A new high tells you what the market already believes. The harder question is which of these runs management itself is underwriting. Our Guidance Momentum screen tracks exactly that: stocks where the company raised its own forward numbers.
One more pattern worth noticing: 6 of the 15 names are Health Care stocks. When a whole group is making new highs together, a healthcare ETF like XLV, which holds 5 of these names, is one way to own part of the group’s strength without betting on which single name leads it from here.
Chasing Highs Is A Reflex. Owning Strength Is A System
A 52-week-high list is seductive: everything on it has been going right. But buying a stock because it is at its high is buying a price, and prices revert; what persists is the quality underneath the run.
The Trefis High Quality (HQ) Portfolio is built to own that quality before and after it makes headlines: roughly 30 businesses selected for consistent cash generation, strong margins, and resilient balance sheets, sized and rebalanced with rules. 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. Admire the list; own the system.