Where The Selling Ran Deepest: 9 S&P 500 Stocks At 52-Week Lows
A small list of market laggards is dominated by consumer-facing companies, raising questions about the health of their underlying businesses.
While the S&P 500 gained +5.7% over the last month, a small group of companies went the other way. Today, 9 S&P 500 stocks are at their 52-week lows, a list that includes giants like McDonald’s (MCD) with a market value of about $184.8 billion.
The concentration is notable: 6 of the 9 names are from the Consumer Discretionary sector. The question for any investor is whether a weak stock price reflects a weakening business. A look at the fundamentals for the names below shows the answer is not always simple.
Thursday’s Full 52-Week-Low List
Here are all 9 names, sorted by market capitalization, with returns over four windows:
| Tickers | Market Cap |
1D % Chg |
1W % Chg |
1M % Chg |
1Y % Chg |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| MCD | $184.8 Bil | -2.6% | -3.4% | -4.2% | -14.9% |
| TJX | $148.4 Bil | -1.9% | -4.6% | -16.7% | -0.6% |
| NKE | $57.0 Bil | -0.4% | -4.4% | -11.1% | -49.8% |
| LHX | $48.9 Bil | -0.4% | -3.1% | -11.9% | -4.1% |
| LVS | $28.9 Bil | -4.3% | -3.8% | -8.3% | -19.6% |
| VICI | $27.5 Bil | -0.9% | -3.0% | -5.0% | -18.0% |
| ROL | $17.3 Bil | -2.1% | -1.2% | -6.8% | -35.4% |
| APTV | $9.7 Bil | -1.8% | -3.4% | -21.6% | -43.1% |
| WYNN | $9.6 Bil | -3.7% | -6.0% | -5.2% | -20.7% |
Is every business here showing signs of damage?
Not if you look at their top-line performance. TJX Companies (TJX) saw its revenue grow 8.1% over the last twelve months. Las Vegas Sands (LVS) posted even stronger results, with revenue growth of 18.1% over the last twelve months and a free cash flow yield of 9.3%.
These figures stand in contrast to a name like Nike (NKE), where revenue grew just 0.2% over the same period. The list contains a mix of companies whose fundamentals appear to be holding up and others where growth has slowed.
A 52-week low is a starting point, not a conclusion.
This kind of list is best used as a prompt for research, not a signal to buy or sell. A stock at its weakest price in a year can represent a genuinely damaged company, or it can be a solid business that has fallen out of favor with the market.
The disciplined approach is to investigate the underlying business fundamentals before reacting to the price. The numbers tell a story that the ticker alone cannot.
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.
Notice how many of these names sit in one corner of the market: 6 of the 9 are Consumer Discretionary stocks. When a whole group is marked down together, a consumer discretionary ETF like XLY is one way to own an eventual recovery without betting on which single name survives it best.
Weakness Is Information. It Is Not An Instruction
A 52-week low tells you what the market thinks today. It does not tell you what to do, and acting on price alone is how value traps get bought. The missing ingredient is always the same: is the business still sound?
Asking that question across thousands of stocks, every day, is exactly how the Trefis High Quality (HQ) Portfolio is built: roughly 30 names that pass the quality screens, held with rules instead of nerve. 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. Let the low list sharpen your watchlist, and let the portfolio carry the risk.