Sep 2, 2024
When you have some time, be sure to listen to the latest episode of The Compound where Bespoke’s Paul Hickey joined Josh Brown, Michael Batnick, and Gunjan Banerji for an in-depth conversation about markets. You can find it at this link or wherever you typically listen to podcasts.
With four months left in 2024, below is a look at the year-to-date performance of the 30 stocks in the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Would you believe that previously left-for-dead blue chip 3M (MMM) is currently the Dow’s best performing stock on the year? With a gain of more than 50% YTD, MMM is just ahead of Walmart’s (WMT) 48.4% gain.
Three stocks in the Financials sector round out the top five: American Express (AXP), Goldman Sachs (GS), and JP Morgan (JPM).
On the flip side, current left-for-dead blue chips have been the year’s worst performers in the Dow: NIKE (NKE), Boeing (BA), and Intel (INTC). All three of these stocks are down more than 20% on the year.
Below is a look at the growth of a hypothetical $10k investment in 3M (MMM) shares at the start of 1990 with dividends re-invested. MMM shares peaked more than six years ago in early 2018, where that $10k had turned into nearly $300k at the highs. From its high point in early 2018 through late 2023, MMM experienced a drawdown of more than 60%, leaving the $10k in 1990 down to just $115k at its recent lows.
With a year-to-date gain of more than 50% in shares, though, the current value of $10k in 1990 is back up to $226k.
If it weren’t for 3M’s dividend, long-term returns would be much more muted. An easy way to show this is to look at MMM’s share price change versus its total return since 1990. Whereas MMM shares are up just 741% in price since 1990, its total return has been 2,165%. This means that well over 50% of MMM’s returns over this period have been from re-investing the dividends paid out by the company.
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Aug 29, 2024
The “Bespoke 50” is a basket of noteworthy growth stocks in the Russell 3,000. To make the list, a stock must have strong earnings growth prospects along with an attractive price chart based on Bespoke’s analysis. There were 9 changes to the list this week.
The Bespoke 50 is available with a Bespoke Premium subscription or a Bespoke Institutional subscription. With Bespoke Premium, you’ll receive a number of daily market updates from us along with our weekly newsletter and a portion of our investor tools. With Bespoke Institutional, you’ll receive everything that’s included with Premium plus additional daily macro analysis and more stock-specific research.
To see all 50 stocks that currently make up the Bespoke 50, simply start a two-week trial to Bespoke Premium or Bespoke Institutional.
The Bespoke 50 performance chart shown does not represent actual investment results. The Bespoke 50 is updated monthly on Thursdays unless otherwise noted. Performance is based on equally weighting each of the 50 stocks (2% each) and is calculated using each stock’s opening price as of Friday morning after publication. Entry prices and exit prices used for stocks that are added or removed from the Bespoke 50 are based on Friday’s opening price. Any potential commissions, brokerage fees, or dividends are not included in the Bespoke 50 performance calculation, but the performance shown is net of a hypothetical annual advisory fee of 0.85%. Performance tracking for the Bespoke 50 and the Russell 3,000 total return index begins on March 5th, 2012 when the Bespoke 50 was first published. Past performance is not a guarantee of future results. The Bespoke 50 is meant to be an idea generator for investors and not a recommendation to buy or sell any specific securities. It is not personalized advice because it in no way takes into account an investor’s individual needs. As always, investors should conduct their own research when buying or selling individual securities. Click here to read our full disclosure on hypothetical performance tracking. Bespoke representatives or wealth management clients may have positions in securities discussed or mentioned in its published content.
Aug 29, 2024
Updated home-price trends across the country from S&P CoreLogic’s Case Shiller indices came out earlier this week and showed home prices up 5.4% YoY and up about 0.5% MoM nationally through June 2024.
Below is a snapshot of the 20 individual cities tracked by Case Shiller. Notably, New York home prices were up the most of any city on a year-over-year basis at +8.99%. Three West Coast cities followed New York with gains of more than 8% as well: San Diego, Las Vegas, and Los Angeles.
Home prices were up the least over the last year in Portland at just 0.77%, followed by Denver (1.90%) and Minneapolis (2.01%).
Thirteen of the twenty cities tracked made new all-time highs in June. San Francisco is the farthest below all-time highs at -7.06%.
Miami and Tampa — two Florida cities — are still up the most since COVID hit in February 2020 with gains of more than 70%. San Francisco, DC, Portland, and Minneapolis have seen home prices rise the least since COVID, although they’re still all up more than 35%.
Since the brief pullback we saw in 2022 and early 2023, home prices nationally are up just over 11%, and cities like New York, San Diego, LA, Chicago, and Detroit have seen the biggest bounces off their 2023 lows with gains of roughly 15% or more.
Below is a chart showing the year-over-year percentage change in Case Shiller home price indices from June 2023 to June 2024:
Below are price charts for each city and the three composite indices since the start of Case Shiller’s data. Cities highlighted in green are currently at all-time highs. The red line in each chart marks the onset of the COVID pandemic, so you can see how much prices started to jump at that point.
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Aug 28, 2024
Most stock tickers are made up of either two or three letters. There are 676 possible two-letter tickers and 17,576 possible three-letter tickers, but there are only 26 possible one-letter tickers. Below is a look at current publicly traded single-letter tickers on US stock exchanges.
The most well-known single-letter tickers are probably Citigroup (C), Ford (F), AT&T (T), Visa (V), and US Steel (X). In all, 21 of the 26 letters in the alphabet are currently being used as stock tickers. The letters currently not in use? I, N, P, Q, and Y.
Interestingly, all eleven major sectors are represented in the “Alphabet Portfolio” shown below. Talk about diversified! Industrials and Consumer Discretionary both show up four times, while Financials shows up three times. The remaining sectors either have one or two tickers included.
In terms of the make-up of these 21 stocks, they’re more dividend-heavy. All but four of the single-letter tickers pay a dividend, and their average yield is currently 2.79%. That’s quite a bit higher than the 1.22% the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) currently yields.
In terms of recent performance, while there have been some decent gains this year (B, C, D, J, K, L, R, T), there have also been some stinkers (M, S, U, W, X). On average, this basket of stocks has posted a total return of 4.67% this year, which is well behind the 18.9% that SPY has gained. Over the last three years, the performance disparity widens even more, with single-letter tickers up just 3.1% compared to a gain of 30.4% for SPY. Unfortunately it looks like single-letter tickers = single-digit returns. At least in recent years. It would likely be a much different story if any of the mega-caps had single-letter tickers!
As always, past performance is no guarantee of future results!
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Aug 27, 2024
In today’s “$10,000 in…” series, we’re taking a look at NIKE (NKE).
NIKE, Inc. (NKE) was founded in 1964 as Blue Ribbon Sports by University of Oregon track athlete Phil Knight and his coach Bill Bowerman. Initially, the company operated as a distributor for the Japanese shoemaker Onitsuka Tiger, selling shoes out of Knight’s car at track meets. In 1971, Blue Ribbon Sports rebranded as Nike, named after the Greek goddess of victory, and introduced the iconic “Swoosh” logo. The company rapidly expanded its product line and marketing efforts, becoming a leading athletic footwear and apparel brand. Nike went public in December 1980, with its initial public offering (IPO) marking the beginning of its ascent as a global sportswear powerhouse.
Below is a look at the growth of a hypothetical $10,000 investment in shares of NKE at the start of 1990 (ex any initial trading costs) with dividends re-invested back into company shares. As of 8/26/24, $10k in NKE at the start of 1990 would be worth $1,534,600 today. That’s a gain of more than 15,000%.
While going from $10k up to $1.5 million is nothing to sneeze at, this was actually above $3 million at NKE’s peak in late 2021. Shares are currently in a 52% drawdown and are about where they were trading five years ago in August 2019.
As always, past performance is no guarantee of future results!
We wrote more about NIKE (NKE) and its potential as a turnaround play in a recent Bespoke Chart of the Day. To read it, simply sign up for a trial to one of the two Bespoke membership options shown below. Click here or on the image below to sign up for a two-week trial today!
