As someone who used to work at the World Trade Center, the coming 10-year anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks hits me especially hard. I lost friends on that fateful September morning, as did so many of my fellow Americans. More importantly, America lost her collective sense of sanctuary from the very real enemies committed to her destruction. Yet try as they may, America’s foes failed to break our spirit. The dastardly acts also failed to wreak the kind of havoc on our financial markets our enemies intended.
Perhaps the best way to illustrate just how much resolve our equity markets possess is by looking at the powerful gains in the best-performing stocks since the 9/11 attacks. To find out just how powerful these gains have been, I ran a Bloomberg search for the top performing stocks (currently over $500 million in market cap) of the past 10 years.
There were a lot of familiar names on the list, including such market stars as Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL), which soared 4,186%, Jos. A. Bank Clothiers (NASDAQ:JOSB), which climbed 2,995%, and Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN), which saw a 2,553% gain since 9/11. Yet as great as those gains are, these three stellar stocks didn’t even make the top 10.
The table below shows the 10 best-performing stocks since 9/11.
Topping the list is beverage firm Hansen Natural (NASDAQ:HANS), with an incredible 10-year total return of 17,184%. Another beverage firm, Green Mountain Coffee Roasters (NASDAQ:GMCR) made the list at No. 9, drinking up a gain of nearly 5,000%. Internet software firm LivePerson (NASDAQ:LPSN) placed second on the list with more than 9,000% total return, and in third place is ETF issuer WisdomTree Investments (NASDAQ:WETF) with a surge of 8,760%.
The fantastic gains we’ve seen in these and so many other stocks are just a small example of the kind of resolve America has shown in the decade since the 9/11 terror attacks. And though big percentage gains in stocks pale in comparison to the individual acts of heroism that so many Americans have performed over the past decade, the stellar showings of these stocks do represent a victory for the markets, for capitalism and for the freedom that makes it all possible.
At the time of publication, Jim Woods held no positions in any of the stocks mentioned in this article.
