It was just two years ago today that the U.S. markets reached an absolute bottom. Investors were reeling and the public was literally getting ready for a breakdown of the system. After bailouts, after financial support, after injecting liquidity, and after moves to save the system, it was March 9, 2009 that marked the lows on just about all counts. The economists were absolutely right about there not being a V-bottom recovery in the overall economy but the market did show a massive V-bottom recovery. The gains have been amazing in the best stock market of most people’s lives… almost 100% in the S&P 500 and 124% in the NASDAQ-100.
24/7 Wall St. wanted to take a look at some of the biggest gains in the biggest stocks that matter in America. We took a look at gains in some of the most widely held stocks. We found the massive gains in Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL), Bank of America Corporation (NYSE: BAC), Caterpillar Inc. (NYSE: CAT), ConocoPhillips (NYSE: COP), EI DuPont de Nemours & Co. (NYSE: DD), Walt Disney Co. (NYSE: DIS), General Electric Co. (NYSE: GE), Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG), J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. (NYSE: JPM), Oracle Corporation (NASDAQ: ORCL), and Wells Fargo & Company (NYSE: WFC). Apple is up 330%, and it is not even first on the list of companies covered.
In order for the DJIA components to be on the list, they had to be up 100% at the one-year crash. We included other big gainers that were also widely held, large employers with products that are widely used. Below is a chart showing the closing price of Tuesday, the last day of the two-year mark. The chart also includes consensus price targets from Thomson Reuters for investors to see if analysts still see upside from today now that the gains have been so large. We also included the lows of March 2009, but these were not all the exact lows on the March 9, 2009 close as many of them missed the calendar by a bit due to sector flavor of the day. The gain marks the gain from the March 2009 lows. We also showed the 52-week trading range for each of these and the market cap today.
| Stock | Price | Target | Mar09-Low | Gain | 52-WEEK | MKT CAP |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AAPL | $355.76 | $417.98 | $82.33 | 330% | 199.25 – 364.90 | $327.7 B |
| BAC | $14.69 | $18.29 | $3.00 | 389% | 10.91 – 19.86 | $148 B |
| C | $4.64 | $5.61 | $0.97 | 378% | 3.53 – 5.15 | $134 B |
| CAT | $104.13 | $113.25 | $21.71 | 379% | 54.89 – 105.86 | $66.5 B |
| COP | $78.32 | $73.25 | $34.12 | 100% | 48.06 – 81.00 | $112 B |
| DD | $54.26 | $60.00 | $16.05 | 239% | 33.66 – 56.19 | $50 B |
| DIS | $43.20 | $48.83 | $15.14 | 184% | 30.72 – 44.34 | $82 B |
| GE | $20.63 | $22.79 | $5.87 | 251% | 13.75 – 21.65 | $219 B |
| GOOG | $592.31 | $724.32 | $289.45 | 105% | 433.63 – 642.96 | $190 B |
| JPM | $46.40 | $54.76 | $14.96 | 209% | 35.16 – 48.36 | $181 B |
| ORCL | $32.74 | $35.32 | $13.80 | 137% | 21.24 – 33.71 | $165 B |
| WFC | $32.51 | $37.47 | $7.80 | 316% | 23.02 – 34.25 | $171 B |
We also included a brief chart showing the March-2009 lows in each the key ETFs of the SPDR Dow Jones Industrial Average (NYSE: DIA), SPDR S&P 500 (NYSE: SPY), and PowerShares QQQ (NASDAQ: QQQQ).
| ETF | Price | Low | Gain |
|---|---|---|---|
| DIA | $121.99 | $64.78 | 88% |
| SPY | $132.58 | $67.1 | 97.5% |
| QQQQ | $57.42 | $25.63 | 124% |
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JON C. OGG
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