11 Updated Stocks and the Sad Story They Tell

I did a screen in Finviz, a great site that you should check out if you don't know about it, and only 11 stocks out of the S & P 500 are up year to date through the close on November 21. They are:

Family Dollar Stores (FDO) - Up 34.21%
Rohm and Haas (ROH) - 34.18%
UST Inc (UST) - 29.8%
Barr Pharmaceuticals (BRL) - 21.62%
Amgen (AMGN) - 18.22%
General Mills (GIS) - 16.62%
Walmart (WMT) - 12.79%
Hudson City Bancorp (HCBK) - 12.01%
Campbell Soup (CPB) - 3.48%
Celgene (CELG) - 2.79%
People's United Financial (PBCT) - 1.63%

Surprisingly, two banks are on the list. There are three biotech/pharm companies, and a few staples. Rohm and Haas is being bought by Dow Chemical (DOW), which explains its resilient performance. UST is also being purchased by Altria (MO).

Hudson City Bancorp turned down the government investment via the Capital Purchase Plan, and People's United Financial just replaced Unisys (UIS) two weeks ago.

Comments

[Jason Rines...:]

A really sad story about the pharmas is if Congress attempts to strong arm them into discounting drugs with no incentive to acquire a massive amount of new patients in exchange. I am in Consumer Healthcare marketing. The clinical trial business flocked overseas this last year in a microsecond. If Obama is going to keep talking about negotiations with the drug companies he should be publically highlighting a mutual value proposition to begin breaking ranks from the Henry Waxman's of the world.

2008 Nov 25 04:37 PM