The 52-Week-High List: 5 S&P 500 Names On Thursday

As of Thursday, October 8, there are 5 S&P 500 stocks trading at their 52-week highs.

At about $481.9 billion in market value, AbbVie (ABBV) is the largest company on the list; its stock is up 8.6% over the past month and up 20.6% over the past year. Energy contributed the most names, 3 of the 5. For context, the S&P 500 is up 1.8% over the past month, including dividends.

The Complete 52-Week-High List

The table below lists all 5 names this screen surfaced, largest first, with one-day, one-week, one-month and one-year returns:

Strong Prices, But How Strong Are The Businesses?

AbbVie (ABBV) trades at 76.4 times trailing earnings, grew revenue 10.4% over the last twelve months and earned an operating margin of 33.9%.

Philip Morris International (PM) trades at 28.7 times trailing earnings, grew revenue 8.9% over the last twelve months and earned an operating margin of 37.7%.

Across the list, one-month moves range from +8.0% for Phillips 66 (PSX) to +16.0% for Marathon Petroleum (MPC).

The median stock on the list is up 119.0% over the past year.

A new high tells you what the market already believes. The harder question is which of these runs management itself is underwriting. Our Guidance Momentum screen tracks exactly that: stocks where the company raised its own forward numbers.

One more pattern worth noticing: 3 of the 5 names are Energy stocks. When a whole group is making new highs together, an energy ETF like XLE, which holds 3 of the 3 largest of them, is one way to own part of the group's strength without betting on which single name leads it from here.

New Highs Fade. Discipline Compounds

Some of the names on this list will keep setting highs for years, and some are at the top of their run right now. Sorting one from the other, name by name, every day, is the work most investors never keep up with.

That sorting is what the Trefis High Quality (HQ) Portfolio does systematically: about 30 quality businesses screened for the fundamentals that sustain a run, held with rules instead of excitement. It has a track record of outpacing a benchmark that combines the S&P 500, the S&P MidCap 400, and the Russell 2000. Use the high list for ideas; use the portfolio for the compounding.