Where The Selling Ran Deepest: 22 S&P 500 Stocks At 52-Week Lows
A list of market laggards is dominated by consumer-facing giants, raising questions about price versus performance.
McDonald’s (MCD), with a market value of about $179.7 billion, is the largest company on today’s 52-week-low list. It is one of 22 S&P 500 stocks at its weakest price of the past year, where the broader S&P 500 returned -1.4% over the last month.
The list is heavily weighted toward consumer names, with 10 from the Consumer Discretionary sector. The question for an investor is whether these price slides reflect a new reality for the businesses, or a discount on their recent performance. The full list of names follows.
The Complete 52-Week-Low List
Here are all 22 names, sorted by market capitalization, with returns over four windows:
| Tickers | Market Cap |
1D % Chg |
1W % Chg |
1M % Chg |
1Y % Chg |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| MCD | $179.7 Bil | -0.9% | -2.9% | -6.7% | -16.9% |
| TJX | $139.5 Bil | -2.2% | -5.4% | -20.3% | -9.4% |
| LOW | $111.0 Bil | -1.1% | -0.7% | -9.3% | -25.8% |
| SYK | $105.6 Bil | -0.4% | -13.2% | -20.4% | -29.2% |
| AON | $65.0 Bil | -3.5% | -6.6% | -14.6% | -16.9% |
| TDG | $64.6 Bil | -1.7% | -2.6% | -8.0% | -13.0% |
| CRH | $59.6 Bil | -1.4% | -2.0% | -10.8% | -19.1% |
| NKE | $55.4 Bil | -2.0% | -2.0% | -10.4% | -48.0% |
| AZO | $47.9 Bil | -1.4% | -1.8% | -5.1% | -31.4% |
| LHX | $46.6 Bil | -2.1% | -4.5% | -13.2% | -7.1% |
| IDXX | $40.7 Bil | -1.0% | -5.5% | -13.5% | -21.1% |
| VMC | $32.4 Bil | -3.3% | -3.8% | -12.3% | -15.8% |
| CCL | $31.3 Bil | -2.2% | -2.3% | -18.2% | -26.9% |
| MLM | $30.2 Bil | -1.8% | -0.4% | -8.3% | -19.3% |
| LVS | $28.3 Bil | -1.5% | -1.2% | -4.7% | -17.6% |
| VICI | $27.5 Bil | -0.2% | -1.3% | -3.3% | -19.4% |
| ROL | $16.6 Bil | -1.2% | -4.6% | -7.2% | -38.7% |
| LULU | $11.5 Bil | -3.4% | -15.5% | -22.0% | -40.7% |
| APTV | $9.4 Bil | -2.7% | -0.8% | -10.6% | -45.9% |
| WYNN | $9.3 Bil | -2.2% | -0.4% | -11.8% | -25.8% |
| PNR | $9.2 Bil | -1.9% | -4.8% | -13.8% | -47.4% |
| BLDR | $6.6 Bil | -1.9% | -2.2% | -14.7% | -58.5% |
Several large retailers on the list still show growing revenue.
TJX Companies (TJX), the second-largest name on the list, has declined 20.3% over the last month. Over the last twelve months, however, its revenue grew 7.7%. Similarly, Lowe’s Companies (LOW) saw its stock decline 9.3% in the last month, while its revenue grew 8.2% over the last twelve months. Both trade at new lows while their recent top-line results show growth.
A low price is a signal to check the business, not a verdict on it.
A 52-week-low list is a screen for dislocation, not a shopping list. A stock arrives here for a reason, which can range from true fundamental damage to a temporary market overreaction. The disciplined approach is to treat the low price as a prompt to re-examine the business itself, separating the marked-down asset from the broken one.
A 52-week-low list tells you where the pain is; it does not tell you which of these declines are worth buying. That second question is what our Buy the Dip screen answers, every day: beaten-down names where the fundamentals still hold up.
Notice how many of these names sit in one corner of the market: 10 of the 22 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.
The Low List Is A Symptom. Own The Discipline Instead
Stocks land on this list for different reasons, and the businesses behind them are in very different shape; what they share is that the market’s verdict arrived faster than any of them could answer it. Some will answer it in time and some will not, and telling them apart name by name is unforgiving work.
That work is what the Trefis High Quality (HQ) Portfolio systematizes: about 30 quality businesses screened for the cash flow and balance-sheet strength that let a company fight through a bad year, sized and rebalanced by 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. Read the list; own the discipline.