It definitely wasn't a pretty month, with the S&P 500 declining 8.6%. Below we provide the performance of the ten S&P 500 sectors along with the best and worst performing individual stocks in the index in January. As shown, Financials were a large part of the overall declines, as the sector has fallen 26.5% year to date. Utilities and Health Care were the best performing sectors, declining by just 0.8% and 1.3% respectively.
Micron Technology (MU) was the best performing S&P 500 stock in January with a gain of 40.91%. Sprint (S) ranked second at 32.79%, followed by Tesoro (TSO), SLM, Morgan Stanley (MS), Noble Corp (NE), and SuperValu (SVU).
On the downside, Fifth Third (FITB) led the declines, followed by HBAN, STI, MI, and RF. The majority of the losers were Financials, although Jones Apparel, Textron, Eastman Kodak, and Johnson Controls also made the list. The 25 worst performing stocks in January are all already down more than 30% year to date. They're facing an uphill battle for the remainder of the year.
Comments