Mid Cap Stocks At 52-Week Highs: Friday’s Full List

A short list of new highs is led by one name's explosive one-month run, raising questions about price and value.

CNH Industrial (CNH) has gained 32.7% over the last month. It is one of just 4 Mid Cap stocks in our coverage with a market value above $10 billion to trade at a 52-week high as of Friday, September 4. For context, the S&P 500 (SPY) returned +0.2% over the last month.

The list is small and varied, with two names from the Information Technology sector. But the central question is what to make of a price that has moved so far, so fast. Below are the names reaching their highest price of the past year.

The Full List, Largest First

The table below lists all 4 names this screen surfaced, largest first, with one-day, one-week, one-month, and one-year returns:

Has CNH Industrial's price outrun its business?

The strongest one-month run on the list belongs to CNH Industrial (CNH). The stock now trades at 57.3 times trailing earnings. Over the last twelve months, its revenue grew 0.6%. The largest company on the list, HP (HPQ), offers a different picture. Its stock gained 15.8% over the last month, and it trades at 12.2 times trailing earnings after its revenue grew 8.1% over the last twelve months.

A new high is a question, not an answer.

A 52-week-high list is a map of strength, and strong stocks often continue to be strong. But a high price is not a verdict on a company's quality. It is simply a data point. The disciplined move for an investor is to treat it as a prompt to look again at the business, and to ask whether the fundamentals truly earn the new level.

Before chasing any name on this list, ask what the company itself expects next. Our Guidance Momentum screen surfaces the stocks whose managements just raised their own outlooks, which is the momentum that tends to have staying power.

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 three major indices - the S&P 500, S&P Mid-cap, and Russell 2000. Use the high list for ideas; use the portfolio for the compounding.