Where The Selling Ran Deepest: 5 S&P 500 Stocks At 52-Week Lows

A short list of market laggards includes a household name and a retailer's sharp one-month decline.

The Aerospace & Defense industry placed two names on today's 52-week-low list. In total, 5 S&P 500 stocks are at their weakest price of the past year, a period where the S&P 500 has returned +0.2% over the last month. The largest company on the list is McDonald's (MCD), with a market value of about $181.3 billion.

This small group raises a direct question for investors: when a company's stock hits a new low while its underlying business is still growing, is it a signal of trouble or opportunity? The full list of names follows.

Friday's Full 52-Week-Low List

Here are all 5 names, sorted by market capitalization, with returns over four windows:

A steep stock slide has created a low multiple for one name.

Lululemon Athletica (LULU) shows the steepest one-month slide on the list, down 19.3%. Following that decline, the company trades at 8.0 times trailing earnings. Over the last twelve months, its revenue grew 1.7%, and it currently has a free cash flow yield of 11.9%.

A 52-week low is a starting point for research, not a conclusion.

A list like this is a screen, not a recommendation. A stock at its yearly low can signal a business in genuine trouble or a solid company whose shares have simply been marked down by the market. The disciplined next step is always the same: investigate the fundamentals. A low price is only interesting if the underlying business is sound.

If any of these names tempt you, resist buying a 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.

Catching Falling Prices Is A Skill. Not Needing To Is A Strategy

Buying stocks at 52-week lows works brilliantly on the survivors and painfully on the rest, and nobody rings a bell to tell you which is which. The honest answer for most investors is to stop needing that call.

The Trefis High Quality (HQ) Portfolio holds roughly 30 businesses selected for the traits that make recoveries likely in the first place: consistent cash generation, strong margins, resilient balance sheets. It has a track record of outpacing a benchmark that combines the three major indices - the S&P 500, S&P Mid-cap, and Russell 2000. Watch the low list for information; let a disciplined basket do the buying.