11 Red Days In A Row: Vertiv Stock Is Down 20%
Shares of Vertiv (VRT) have closed lower in each of the last 11 sessions, a cumulative decline of 19.7%. That erased about $19.3 billion from the company’s market value, which now stands at about $78.3 billion. The stock closed at $203.56 on Tuesday, October 20, 45.9% below its 52-week high of $376.06 and 36.0% above its low of $149.73.
VRT Versus The S&P 500
Returns for VRT and the S&P 500 over the streak and the periods around it, all ending Tuesday, October 20 and including dividends:
| Return Period | VRT | S&P 500 |
|---|---|---|
| 1 Day | -1.2% | 0.3% |
| 11 Days (Current Streak) | -19.7% | -0.8% |
| 1 Month (21 Trading Days) | -18.9% | -0.6% |
| 3 Months (63 Trading Days) | -32.4% | 3.1% |
| Year To Date | 25.7% | 13.7% |
| 1 Year (252 Trading Days) | 17.1% | 17.1% |
A Stock-Specific Slide, Or A Market Move?
The market explains little of this: the S&P 500 lost 0.8% over the same 11 sessions, including dividends, against Vertiv’s -19.7%. No other S&P 500 stock is currently on a losing streak of 11 days or longer. Over the past three months the stock is down 32.4%, a window that includes the streak; over the other 52 sessions of that window it was down 15.8%.
Is The Business As Weak As The Stock?
On the fundamentals, revenue grew 26.2% over the last twelve months, against a median of 7.3% for S&P 500 Industrials stocks; its operating margin is 19.4%, versus a median of 17.6%; and the stock trades at 45.2 times trailing earnings against a median of 27.2. The read is mixed: revenue growth above the median and margins above the median on one side, a multiple well above the median on the other.
A slide like this raises an obvious follow-up: which marked-down stocks are actually worth buying? Our Buy the Dip screen runs that test every day, flagging beaten-down names whose fundamentals still hold up.
Prefer the theme to the single name? An industrials ETF like XLI holds the whole group, not just this stock. It is still a concentrated bet on one theme, which is the gap the portfolio below is built to close.
Weakness In One Name Should Be Noise, Not News
For a diversified holder, a streak like this is a data point. For a concentrated one, it is a hole in the plan. The difference is never the stock; it is the portfolio built around it.
Building that portfolio is what the Trefis High Quality (HQ) Portfolio does: roughly 30 businesses with the cash generation and balance-sheet strength to absorb a bad month, selected and rebalanced by 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. Make the next streak, in either direction, someone else’s drama.