The 52-Week-Low List: 21 S&P 500 Names On Thursday
A list of market laggards is led by household names, raising questions about price versus performance.
McDonald’s, with a market value of about $179.4 billion, is the largest of 21 S&P 500 stocks hitting 52-week lows on Thursday. The list is heavily weighted toward the consumer, with 10 names from the Consumer Discretionary sector, all while the S&P 500 itself returned -1.7% over the last month.
The presence of such large, established companies raises a critical question: are these prices reflecting new business weakness, or is the market marking down solid operators? The full list of names follows.
Thursday’s Full 52-Week-Low List
Here are all 21 names, sorted by market capitalization, with returns over four windows:
| Tickers | Market Cap |
1D % Chg |
1W % Chg |
1M % Chg |
1Y % Chg |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| MCD | $179.4 Bil | -0.2% | -3.0% | -7.0% | -16.9% |
| LOW | $109.9 Bil | -1.0% | -1.6% | -11.1% | -25.4% |
| SYK | $103.5 Bil | -2.0% | -13.5% | -22.4% | -30.6% |
| CRH | $58.5 Bil | -1.9% | -5.4% | -13.1% | -19.7% |
| NKE | $54.3 Bil | -2.0% | -4.2% | -10.4% | -48.6% |
| AZO | $47.5 Bil | -1.0% | -1.8% | -5.3% | -32.9% |
| LHX | $46.2 Bil | -0.8% | -4.5% | -12.7% | -6.7% |
| IDXX | $40.0 Bil | -1.7% | -6.0% | -13.7% | -22.7% |
| CCL | $31.0 Bil | -1.0% | -5.3% | -19.0% | -27.7% |
| MLM | $30.2 Bil | -0.1% | -2.8% | -9.1% | -17.7% |
| LVS | $27.9 Bil | -1.7% | -4.4% | -6.8% | -19.4% |
| VICI | $27.0 Bil | -1.9% | -3.4% | -4.8% | -20.5% |
| OTIS | $26.0 Bil | -2.0% | -4.2% | -6.5% | -21.2% |
| LEN | $19.0 Bil | -3.5% | -6.8% | -11.0% | -42.2% |
| LII | $12.9 Bil | -0.8% | -0.4% | -13.5% | -32.5% |
| LULU | $11.2 Bil | -2.8% | -19.3% | -22.9% | -41.5% |
| COO | $10.6 Bil | -14.7% | -22.3% | -29.5% | -20.6% |
| PNR | $9.1 Bil | -1.4% | -5.2% | -15.6% | -47.4% |
| WYNN | $9.1 Bil | -2.0% | -3.4% | -15.4% | -26.5% |
| NCLH | $6.7 Bil | -1.9% | -6.4% | -22.1% | -42.6% |
| BLDR | $6.3 Bil | -3.9% | -6.5% | -21.5% | -58.0% |
Which names show business growth despite the price slide?
Lowe’s Companies (LOW), the second-largest name on the list with a market value of about $109.9 billion, stands out. Its revenue grew 8.2% over the last twelve months, and the company generates a free cash flow yield of 6.4%. McDonald’s (MCD) shows a similar pattern. Its revenue grew 6.3% over the last twelve months. For both, the recent price weakness contrasts with a history of business expansion.
So is a 52-week low a red flag or a green light?
A list of stocks at their yearly lows is not an automatic signal to buy or to sell. It is a starting point for research. A low can mark a business with genuine fundamental damage, or it can flag a solid company whose shares are simply on sale. The disciplined move is always to investigate the health of the business before making a judgment on the price.
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 21 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.
Catching Falling Prices Is A Skill. Not Needing To Is A Strategy
Buying stocks at 52-week lows works brilliantly on the survivors and painfully on the rest, and nobody rings a bell to tell you which is which. The honest answer for most investors is to stop needing that call.
The Trefis High Quality (HQ) Portfolio holds roughly 30 businesses selected for the traits that make recoveries likely in the first place: consistent cash generation, strong margins, resilient balance sheets. 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. Watch the low list for information; let a disciplined basket do the buying.