Historic Two Year Rallies

Mar 23, 2022

Today marks the two-year anniversary of the COVID Crash low on March 23rd, 2020. After falling 34% from 2/19/20 to 3/23/20, the S&P has seen a gain of exactly 100% since then. Below is a chart showing the rolling 2-year price change in percentage terms for the S&P since index data begins in 1928. Remarkably, this has been the best two-year gain for the S&P since 1937!

As for two other major US indices, the NASDAQ Composite and Russell 2,000 have been on their strongest runs since the period coming out of the Global Financial Crisis.  Looking further back, though, the late 1990s saw much larger rallies in two-year spans for the NASDAQ, while the post-GFC era is the only comparable period for small caps.

Below we show the rolling 2-year percentage change for the eleven S&P 500 sectors.  As you can see, this two-year run stands out as one of the best for most sectors.  Energy’s run has blown any previous record out of the water as the sector has risen 224% since the COVID low two years ago.  Aside from Energy, the current two-year rallies for most sectors have been the largest since the couple of years coming out of the Financial Crisis or the 1990s for sectors like Technology and Health Care.  Click here if you would like to see Bespoke’s premium research.

Best S&P 500 Stocks Since the COVID Crash Lows

Mar 23, 2022

Two years ago to the day, the S&P 500 put in a low after a 33.9% pullback from the closing high on 2/19/20.  While the S&P 500 is once again off its highs, the index sits just over 100% above that 3/23/20, low and 32.7% above the pre-pandemic high. In the table below, we show the current S&P 500 components which have rallied the most since the COVID Crash low as well as how much each stock declined during the crash.

While it was not a member of the S&P 500 at the time of the COVID crash, being added on 12/21/20, Tesla (TSLA) is currently the S&P 500 member which has risen the most since the broader market low. After being more than cut in half, it has since risen over 1,000%.  The next best performers are Devon Energy (DVN) and APA Corp (APA); a couple of Energy sector names that saw even larger declines of 72.8% and 84.86%, respectively from 2/19/20 to 3/23/20.  Along since Freeport-McMoRan (FCX), both stocks have risen well over 800% over the past two years. Of the list of the 25 best performers in the S&P 500, the only one that managed to move higher during the COVID Crash was vaccine producer Moderna (MRNA) which had risen 40.43% as the rest of the market collapsed.

By the time of the 3/23/20 low, the index’s worst performers since the pre-pandemic high (2/19/20) had seen monumental declines with many of those stocks dropping over 70%. On the other end of the spectrum, only four stocks had eeked out a gain and only another seven stocks had fallen single-digit percentage points.

As for what those stocks have done since then, below we have created equal weight indices comprised of the S&P 500 members that are still actively traded that were the 20 best and 20 worst performers from 2/19/20 to 3/23/20. Each basket as well as the S&P 500 are indexed to 100 at the COVID Crash low.  As shown, what had at one point been the most beaten-down names, have crushed it over the past two years; hypothetically having turned $100 into $481 having even held up well during the recent bout of weakness for equities.  For comparison, the biggest winners in the early days of the pandemic bought at the lows would have only seen $100 turn into $137.64 while the S&P 500 as a whole would have a little more than doubled.Click here to view Bespoke’s premium membership options.