S&P 500 Stocks At 52-Week Lows: Thursday’s Full List

The market's weakest names include some of its largest, raising questions about value versus damage.

As of Thursday, September 17, there are 15 S&P 500 stocks trading at their 52-week lows. The list includes T-Mobile US (TMUS), a company with a market value of about $180.1 billion, whose stock has declined 8.4% over the last month while the S&P 500 returned -0.6%. The presence of such large companies on a list of laggards raises a critical question: are these businesses broken, or just on sale?

The Full List, Largest First

Here are all 15 names, sorted by market capitalization, with returns over four windows:

Are these businesses actually shrinking?

The largest name on the list suggests otherwise. While its stock is at a yearly low, T-Mobile US (TMUS) saw its revenue grow 9.7% over the last twelve months. The company trades at 17.1 times trailing earnings, and its free cash flow yield is 9.0%. A stock price at its weakest point in a year does not automatically signal a shrinking business.

A low price is a question, not an answer.

A 52-week-low list is not a shopping list. It is a screen for stocks that are deeply out of favor with the market. Some names may have fundamental problems that justify their new, lower prices. Others may be healthy businesses whose stocks have been marked down. The disciplined move is always to investigate the business before making a judgment on the price.

If any of these names tempt you, resist buying on price alone. Our Buy the Dip screen asks the follow-up question that matters: which marked-down stocks still have the growth and cash generation to recover.

Notice how many of these names sit in one corner of the market: 6 of the 15 are Industrials stocks. When a whole group is marked down together, an aerospace and defense ETF like ITA is one way to own an eventual recovery without betting on which single name survives it best.

Weakness Is Information. It Is Not An Instruction

A 52-week low tells you what the market thinks today. It does not tell you what to do, and acting on price alone is how value traps get bought. The missing ingredient is always the same: is the business still sound?

Asking that question across thousands of stocks, every day, is exactly how the Trefis High Quality (HQ) Portfolio is built: roughly 30 names that pass the quality screens, held with rules instead of nerve. It has a track record of outpacing a benchmark that combines the S&P 500, the S&P MidCap 400, and the Russell 2000. Let the low list sharpen your watchlist, and let the portfolio carry the risk.