The best performing Dow Jones stocks of 2010 don’t make a very long list. However, there are a few standouts in the Dow index’s 30 components that have been very profitable for investors. On the other hand, there are a far greater number of losers – particularly after a not-so-pleasant August.
Here’s a look at the Dow Jones Industrial Average components and how they performed in August.
Dow Winners and Losers for August
Of the 30 Dow Jones Industrial Average components, just seven picks squeaked out a gain from August 2 to August 31 (no trading took place on 8/1, a Sunday). Only three tallied gains of more than +3%. Those would be AT&T (NYSE: T), up +4.2%, McDonald’s (NYSE: MCD), up +4.7%; and Pfizer (NYSE: PFE), up +6.1%.
A bright spot that could be drawn from the winners includes the strength of pharma and healthcare during this era of weak consumer spending. On top of Pfizer’s big gains for the month, drugmaker Merck (NYSE: MRK) also pushed out a profit with a +2.0% increase in stock value. And while Johnson & Johnson (NYSE: JNJ) was in the red with a -1.8% decline, that loss was half that of the broader index.
The losers are far more numerous, which is to be expected when the index itself took such a spill on the month. The biggest losers in August for the Dow included tech giants Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO), off -13.3%; Intel (NASDAQ: INTC), down -14.2%; and Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ), down -16.4%.
All of these companies fell on hard times as Wall Street reacted poorly to buyout news in the technology sector — including the HP bidding war with Dell (NASDAQ: DELL) over cloud computing and data storage company 3Par
(NYSE: PAR), and Intel’s purchase of internet security firm McAfee (NYSE: MFE).
Dow Winners and Losers in 2010
The big picture of the Dow shows a wide gap between the haves and the have nots.
Fully half of the stocks – 15 of the 30 components – have experienced a double-digit move year to date, varying from a +21.1% gain in DuPont (NYSE: DD) from January 1 to August 31 to a -36.6% loss for aluminum giant Alcoa (NYSE: AA) in the same period.
And with the Dow off about -4% on the year through August it’s no surprise that decliners outnumber gainers. It is interesting to note, however, that a mere 6 out of 30 components are up on the year.
Rounding out the top three gainers in the Dow for 2010 along with DuPont are fast food giant McDonald’s (NYSE: MCD), up +17.0% through August 31, and aerospace giant Boeing (NYSE: BA), up +12.9% year to date.
The three worst performers so far in 2010 among the Dow 30 include Alcoa, the aforementioned Hewlett-Packard and Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT). HP’s brutal August gives the stock a -25.4% return from January through August, and Microsoft closes the month only slightly behind with a -23.0% so far in 2010.
It’s hard to draw correlations between sectors when it comes to the gainers, since there are so few of them in 2010. And as for the losers, there are so many it makes it equally difficult to plot a trend for the Dow.
As of this writing, Jeff Reeves did not own a position in any of the stocks named here.
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