Dec 1, 2023
The average stock in the large-cap Russell 1,000 rose 9.77% in November, and 38 stocks gained more than 30%, 14 rallied more than 40%, and seven surged more than 50%.
Below are the 30 stocks that rose the most in November. For each name, we also include its market cap, its year-to-date total return, its distance from its 52-week high, and short interest as a percentage of float. As shown, buy-now-pay-later company Affirm (AFRM) was up the most in November with a huge gain of 95.4%, followed by streaming company Roku (ROKU), crypto-trading platform Coinbase (COIN), and digital payments company Block (SQ). Are we back in late 2020/early 2021??
Other notables on the list of big winners include Gap (GPS) with a gain of 56.8%, Expedia (EXPE) at 42.9%, Generac (GNRC) at 39.25%, and Palantir (PLTR) at 35.47%.
Below we’ve expanded the universe to show the top-performing stocks in the Russell 3,000 in November. The Russell 3,000 includes all the stocks in the large-cap Russell 1,000 and small-cap Russell 2,000.
Four stocks in the Russell 3,000 rallied more than 100% in November: Rocky Brands (RCKY), Bluegreen Vacations (BVH), Sight Sciences (SGHT), and TransMedics (TMDX). Rocky Brands is a $210 million market cap retailer that sells heavy-duty boots and other apparel. Bluegreen Vacations is a timeshare company. Sight Sciences creates medical devices and procedures for the eyes. And finally, TransMedics makes unique medical devices built to care for organs during the transplant process.
Before we go, below is a look at the stocks that have gained the most in market cap in 2023. Amazingly, twelve stocks have gained more than $100 billion in market cap this year, six have gained more than $500 billion, and one — Microsoft (MSFT) — has gained more than $1 trillion!
Dec 1, 2023
See what’s driving market performance around the world in today’s Morning Lineup. Bespoke’s Morning Lineup is the best way to start your trading day. Read it now by starting a two-week trial to Bespoke Premium. CLICK HERE to learn more and start your trial.
“Any customer can have a car painted any color that he wants so long as it is black.” – Henry Ford
Below is a snippet of commentary from today’s Morning Lineup. Start a two-week trial to Bespoke Premium to view the full report.
In its last earnings conference call, Tesla CEO Elon Musk noted that the rollout of the Cybertruck has been “production hell”. During yesterday’s rollout, the sentiment from that conference call was on display when the Tesla website said that the base model of the Cybertruck wouldn’t be available until 2025. Given the complexities involved in manufacturing the Cybertruck with, among other things, its stainless-steel exterior, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that it’s difficult to produce. Still, we found it ironic that the product launch came just one day short of 110 years after Henry Ford unveiled the first moving assembly line for cars and reducing the time it took to complete the build of an entire car from half a day to an hour and a half! And now on to the markets.
The year is now 92% complete, but a lot can happen in the final month. With a gain of 9.1% on a total return basis through the end of November, the S&P 500 had its best month since July 2022 and only its 15th monthly gain of over 9% since the start of 1980. With November’s gain, the S&P 500 is up 13.8% over the last year which is two percentage points better than the one-year average total return of 11.8% dating back to 1928. While the last year was above average, the last two years have been weak. The 1.7% annualized gain would be flat if it wasn’t for the dividends. It’s hard to believe but the S&P 500 closed yesterday just 0.80 points above where it closed exactly two years earlier! After factoring in inflation during that time, investors are staring at an annualized decline of about 5% over the last two years. While the two-year return has been well below the historical annualized average of 10.6%, returns for the last five and ten years have been modestly above average, while the 20-year annualized gain of 9.7% is 1.2 percentage points below the historical average.
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Nov 30, 2023
Now that NVIDIA (NVDA) has reported its Q3 numbers (the last of the mega-caps to report), below is an updated look at the number of times “AI” was mentioned during conference calls going back to 2021. The revolutionary ChatGPT app was released in November 2022, and since then, we’ve seen an explosion in “AI” mentions from mega-cap management teams. As shown below, “AI” was mentioned a total of 418 times this quarter across the conference calls of AAPL, AMZN, META, MSFT, GOOGL, and NVDA. The big jump from last quarter’s 350 “AI” mentions was thanks to 154 mentions on NVDA’s call alone!
Apple (AAPL) remains the lone mega-cap that’s hardly discussing “AI” at all on its calls with just nine mentions this quarter. Thus far, Apple has not jumped on the “AI” bandwagon at least when it comes to quarterly earnings conference calls. Amazon (AMZN), on the other hand, has picked up the “AI” pace with 48 mentions this quarter. In Q4 2022 just after ChatGPT’s release, “AI” was mentioned just once on AMZN’s eight prior quarterly calls.
Meta (META) “AI” mentions ticked up even more on its latest call to 71, while Microsoft (MSFT) mentions went the opposite direction and fell from 76 to 61 quarter over quarter. Alphabet (GOOGL) mentions also dipped a bit but remained high at 75, ranking it second behind only NVIDIA for the most number of “AI” mentions in Q3.
The bull market for stocks this year has coincided with a pullback in inflation, but it has also been driven in large part by mega-cap Tech stocks, that, except for AAPL, are now fully on board the AI wave. We’ve asked this question rhetorically several times this year, but once again, where would this market be without ChatGPT?
Nov 28, 2023
The latest S&P CoreLogic Case Shiller home price data for September was released today and showed a 0.3% month-over-month (m/m) increase in home prices at the national level. Fifteen of twenty cities saw prices rise m/m, with Detroit, New York, and Las Vegas jumping the most, and Minneapolis, Denver, Seattle, Dallas, and Portland seeing declines. Year-over-year, Detroit, San Diego, New York, and Chicago are up the most at 6%+, while three cities are down year-over-year: Portland, Phoenix, and Las Vegas.
We highlight how these home price indices have changed over various time frames in the table below.
Home prices have jumped significantly from their lows at the start of 2023. Each of the twenty cities tracked peaked at some point in 2022 and then pulled back and made a low in either January or February of this year. In the chart below, we show how much home prices have jumped in each region from their respective 2023 lows. San Diego and Detroit have seen home prices rally more than 10% already, while Chicago, Cleveland, and Boston are up 8%+.
Below is a look at how much home prices are currently up since February 2020 right before COVID hit. As shown, the composite and national indices are up roughly 45% since COVID began, while Miami and Tampa — two Florida cities — are up the most at roughly 70%. On the other end of the spectrum, San Francisco, Minneapolis, DC, and Portland are up the least since February 2020 at 30-34%.
Finally, below we show how much home prices are up in each city versus their peaks seen during the last housing bubble in the mid-2000s before the Financial Crisis. The national index is now up 69% from its prior housing bubble peak, while Dallas and Denver are up the most at 133% and 126%, respectively. Chicago, Las Vegas, and DC are the cities up the least versus their prior housing bubble peaks at 25% or less.
Below is a look at historical pricing for the twenty Case Shiller cities and the three national indices. Cities in green are at all-time highs.
After the mid-2000s housing bubble burst and prices collapsed following the Financial Crisis, many thought it would take generations to get back to the peak levels seen prior to the crash. Now those prior peaks look like mere bumps in the road after the surge we’ve seen for housing so far this decade.
Nov 27, 2023
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