The bull market turned two years old over the weekend, so we wanted to take a quick moment to highlight some of the S&P 500’s biggest winners and losers over the last two years. Since the S&P 500’s closing low two years ago, 73 stocks in the S&P 500 have rallied at least 100% while just 71 are down. The table below lists the 19 stocks that have rallied at least 200%, and below that we list the 24 stocks that have declined at least 25%.

AI has been a leading theme of the bull market, so most people already know that NVIDIA (NVDA) — with its ten-bagger — tops the list in terms of performance.  Even the big gains in Super Micro (SMCI) and Vistra (VST) probably won’t surprise many people, but looking through the list, some names will likely be eye-openers. Take General Electric (GE).  Wasn’t that an also-ran from the 1990s?  After two decades in a ‘penance’ working off the financial engineering before 2000 and some questionable leadership and strategic decisions, GE has gotten a new lease after breaking up into three units.  Its aerospace unit, which trades under the old ticker GE, has rallied more than 350% during this bull market, and even the two other spin-offs, GE Vernova (GEV), which consists of its electric power business, has doubled, while GE Healthcare (GEHC) is up 50%. Besides GE, other names that may come as a surprise to investors are Royal Caribbean (RCL), Axon Enterprises (AXON), Howmet Aerospace (HWM), and KKR.  At the sector level, Technology leads the list with seven of the 19 names listed while Consumer Staples, Energy, Materials, Health Care, and Real Estate aren’t represented at all.

Of the 24 stocks that have declined at least 25%, seven come from the Consumer Staples sector, including Walgreens Boots Alliance (WBA) and Dollar General (DG), which are both down over 60%.  Health Care is the second most represented sector with six stocks, while Materials is the only other one with more than two stocks on the list.  Overall, eight sectors are represented, with Consumer Discretionary, Financials, and Real Estate being the only ones missing.

Moderna (MRNA) and Pfizer (PFE) were two of the biggest winners during Covid as investors couldn’t get enough of the stocks given their exposure to the vaccine.  Now that Covid is well in the rearview mirror and jabs of the treatment have slowed to a trickle relative to the rates of 2021, investors want little to do with these former market darlings.

The lists of winners and losers during this bull market illustrate the importance of first-mover advantages.  In the table above, streaming pioneer Netflix (NFLX) ranked 15th in performance with a gain of 227%.  Contrast that to names like Paramount Global (PARA) and Warner Brothers Discovery (WBD) below.  In 2021, these companies and others were convinced by NFLX’s streaming success that launching their own services would be a breeze.  However, as the years have passed, the competitive nature of the streaming market has become apparent.  There’s a limit to how many services consumers are willing or able to pay for.

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Welcome to Bespoke Brunch Reads — a linkfest of some of our favorite articles over the past week. The links are mostly market-related, but there are some other interesting subjects covered as well. We hope you enjoy the food for thought as a supplement to the research we provide you during the week.

If you’re looking for a good podcast to listen to this weekend, Paul Hickey joined Schwab’s On Investing with Liz Ann Sonders and Kathy Jones. Click the image below to listen.

Zero Degrees Longitude: On October 13th, 1884, Greenwich, England was chosen as the Prime Meridian by delegates from 25 nations meeting at the International Meridian Conference in Washington, DC. Before the conference, different countries and regions used different prime meridians, which you might imagine would be confusing. Creating a single reference point for navigation and timekeeping worldwide would make travel, trade, and communication much easier. The Royal Observatory in Greenwich, England was already a recognized reference given the British Empire’s maritime dominance at the time. Its meridian was already used by about two-thirds of the world’s ships, which made it the clearest choice for 0 degrees longitude. The adoption of Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) laid the foundation for the standardized system of time zones we use today and has also been instrumental in geographical mapping and modern GPS. Below is a photograph of the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, England.

Housing & Real Estate

Billy Joel Is Selling the Mansion He First Saw While Dredging Oysters (NYT)
From working on an oyster boat and cursing at the mansions on Long Island’s Gold Coast to eventually owning one himself, Billy Joel’s life has come full circle. His sprawling 26-acre estate, “MiddleSea,” is now on the market for $49.9 million, complete with a beach house, guesthouses, a bowling alley, and a helipad. Joel originally bought the mansion he used to admire from afar, naming it after a piano note that launched his legendary career. As his family settles in Florida and taxes climb (yearly property taxes are $567,686), he’s preparing to part ways with the property he once dreamed of owning. [Link]

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