9 S&P 500 Stocks Hit 52-Week Highs On Friday
A short list of new highs shows a notable concentration of strength in one part of the market.
Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) has gained 31.1% over the last month, a period where the S&P 500 has returned +1.0%. As of Friday, September 25, there are 9 S&P 500 stocks trading at their 52-week highs. The list is unusually concentrated. By sector, the 9 names break down as Health Care (6 names), Information Technology (2 names), and Communication Services (1 name). What does it mean when so much of the market’s new strength is clustered in a single area?
Every Name On The List
The table below lists all 9 names this screen surfaced, largest first, with one-day, one-week, one-month, and one-year returns:
| Tickers | Market Cap |
1D % Chg |
1W % Chg |
1M % Chg |
1Y % Chg |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AAPL | $4,998.76 Bil | 1.5% | 1.5% | 8.8% | 35.7% |
| AMD | $1,029.19 Bil | 0.2% | 12.6% | 31.1% | 292.0% |
| MRNA | $79.15 Bil | 2.1% | 29.1% | 32.9% | 668.5% |
| WBD | $77.49 Bil | 0.1% | 11.0% | 7.3% | 55.7% |
| WAT | $42.58 Bil | 0.8% | 2.8% | 4.7% | 48.1% |
| BIIB | $33.62 Bil | 0.5% | 5.6% | 3.0% | 65.3% |
| VTRS | $20.74 Bil | 2.4% | 5.2% | 5.8% | 90.1% |
| RVTY | $16.86 Bil | 0.3% | 5.3% | 19.6% | 79.3% |
| TECH | $11.34 Bil | 0.1% | 0.3% | 0.3% | 42.6% |
Does a 31.1% monthly gain justify a 160.0-times multiple?
Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) is the second-largest company on the list and has run hard. The stock trades at 160.0 times trailing earnings. For that price, investors get a business whose revenue grew 39.5% over the last twelve months, and its operating margin was 15.7%.
A new high is a question, not an answer.
A list of stocks at their highest price of the past year is a map of what the market is rewarding. Strength often persists. But a high price is just that, a price. It is not a verdict on the quality of the underlying business. The disciplined move is to treat the new high as a prompt to check whether the company’s fundamentals can earn the market’s new valuation.
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 9 names are Health Care stocks. When a whole group is making new highs together, a health care ETF like XLV, which holds 3 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 S&P 500, the S&P MidCap 400, and the Russell 2000. Admire the list; own the system.