Where The Selling Ran Deepest: 11 S&P 500 Stocks At 52-Week Lows
A list of market laggards holds names with growing revenue and high cash flow yields.
McDonald’s (MCD), a company with a market value of about $167.7 billion, is now trading at a 52-week low after declining 10.8% over the last month. As of Friday, September 25, there are 11 S&P 500 stocks trading at their 52-week lows, even as the S&P 500 itself returned +1.0% over the last month. This raises a critical question: are these businesses as weak as their stock prices suggest?
The Full List, Largest First
The table below lists all 11 S&P 500 stocks at their 52-week lows, largest first, with one-day, one-week, one-month, and one-year returns:
| Tickers | Market Cap |
1D % Chg |
1W % Chg |
1M % Chg |
1Y % Chg |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| MCD | $167.7 Bil | -0.2% | -4.7% | -10.8% | -20.3% |
| CMCSA | $78.1 Bil | -1.0% | -3.6% | -19.4% | -22.6% |
| LHX | $44.3 Bil | -0.1% | -3.9% | -9.2% | -14.9% |
| OTIS | $25.2 Bil | -1.1% | -3.8% | -8.9% | -24.1% |
| XYL | $24.3 Bil | -0.0% | -4.6% | -9.2% | -26.4% |
| STZ | $19.7 Bil | -0.5% | -4.5% | -15.5% | -12.3% |
| EFX | $17.5 Bil | -0.5% | -6.8% | -22.1% | -41.8% |
| ROL | $14.5 Bil | -1.2% | -7.4% | -18.2% | -45.7% |
| WY | $14.4 Bil | -0.6% | -5.7% | -16.1% | -15.7% |
| CHTR | $13.6 Bil | -3.9% | -11.9% | -26.6% | -57.1% |
| HII | $10.4 Bil | -0.7% | -3.2% | -10.5% | -3.3% |
Is this a list of broken stocks or growing businesses?
Some names on this list show continued business growth despite their price weakness. Comcast (CMCSA), which has declined 19.4% over the last month, trades at 7.0 times trailing earnings. Its revenue grew 0.6% over the last twelve months, and its free cash flow yield is 22.8%.
Another name, L3Harris Technologies (LHX), also shows top-line expansion. The company trades at 23.8 times trailing earnings, and its revenue grew 7.3% over the last twelve months, and its free cash flow yield is 6.3%.
A low price is a signal, not a verdict.
A 52-week-low list is a starting point for research. A stock can reach its weakest price of the year because its underlying business is damaged, or because a solid operation has simply been marked down by the market.
The disciplined approach is to investigate the business fundamentals before reacting to the price. The list flags names for review, but the real work is in separating temporary markdowns from permanent business problems.
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: 6 of the 11 are Industrials stocks. When a whole group is marked down together, an aerospace and defense ETF like ITA 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 S&P 500, the S&P MidCap 400, and the Russell 2000. Watch the low list for information; let a disciplined basket do the buying.