Chances are that if you weren’t short selling all day, this was another ugly summer day that made you want to panic. Covering the market wasn’t any more fun either.  But imagine that there were some key stock winners on a day where oil breaks above $140.00 per barrel and when the DJIA, NASDAQ, and S&P 500 were all down roughly 3%.  You might think you’d have to be Dr. Pangloss for any positive takes, but here are a few key stock winners:

Bed Bath & Beyond Inc. (NASDAQ: BBBY) closed up 4.27% at $29.79 after beating earnings the night before.  We saw nearly triple the volume with more than 14.3 million shares traded.  Earnings were down from the prior year but still better than analysts were expecting.  You just know their customer base isn’t going to stay at home forever, recession or not….

Novo Nordisk A/S (NYSE: NVO) was another standout winner, and it is amazing that the volume on this diabetes winner has remained so low.  The Danish drug company is often one of the few winners on crummy days as their diabetes treatments are above and beyond all.  Shares closed up 2.8% at $67.85.  While 480,000 shares isn’t as actively traded as many key US drug stocks, it is nearly double a normal day for NVO shares. Recession or no recession, that insulin for diabetics has to keep coming and it has to keep getting better and better.

Smith & Wesson Holding Corp. (NASDAQ: SWHC) rose by 6.6% to $5.45 today on more than double volume of 1.66 million shares.  And it wasn’t because we all have to buy guns to fight off the economically challenged. The Supreme Court overturned a handgun ban in Washington D.C. by a 5-4 decision, ruling that the district’s handgun laws violated the Second Amendment by denying individuals the right to own guns.

Sprint Nextel Corp. (NYSE: S) bucked the day’s trends after it said that the recently launched touch screen Samsung Instinct smart phone broke company sales records in its first week in stores.  If there was a phone company that needed a rally, it’s Sprint.  Shares closed up almost 3.4% at $8.84 on almost twice the normal trading volume with more than 64 million shares trading hands.

Yamana Gold Inc. (NYSE: AUY) was the volume leader in major gold stocks today.  With a weakening dollar and oil cruising past $140/barrel, you know the gold bugs were winning today.  We saw more than a 3% gain to back above $900/ounce for gold today.  Yamana shares were up 6.8% at $15.61 on over 21.4 million shares, almost twice its average daily volume.

Interestingly enough, none of the major integrated U.S. oil companies rose today.  Even that huge list of DEFENSIVE STOCKS FOR A CRUMMY MARKET failed to perform again today. 

Jon C. Ogg
June 26, 2008

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