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The Pandemic Economy: Which Stocks are Weathering the Storm?

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The Pandemic Economy infographic

The Pandemic Economy: The Stocks Weathering the Storm

When markets get wacky, even the best companies can’t avoid the maelstrom.

Investors were already tiptoeing on broken glass, knowing that the longest U.S. stock market bull run in history was getting long in the tooth.

Then, when the market foresaw the potential damage that could be caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, it quickly created a vortex that would suck almost everything into it.

Bizarro Market

In the last week, markets flipped into an alternate universe. Every major stock got crushed, while suddenly those holding onto stockpiles of toilet paper and soup reigned supreme.

In such unique circumstances, we wondered which companies were weathering the storm of volatility. To do this, we used Finviz to pull up a visualization of S&P 500 performance, then investigating the segments of the market that were doing well in spite of the recent plunge.

Stock selectionPerformance (Mar 5-12)Components
S&P 500-18.0% 📉The 500 largest U.S. companies by market cap
The Pandemic Economy+12.7% 📈Soup, bleach, pizza, and telecommuting stocks

A few companies not only avoided the chaos — they actually thrived over the last week.

Let’s look at why!

Not Getting Bugged Down

With global travel, events, and social gatherings screeching to a halt, it’s obvious that this is not a winning situation for any typical economy.

However, it’s hard for everyone to simultaneously be a loser, and it’s always inevitable that some stocks will benefit from any crisis — or at least not get hit as hard as their peers.

  • Zoom Video Communications (ZM)
    There’s no doubt a pandemic is tough on brick-and-mortar companies, but for most white collar workers the show must go on. As a pure play stock in the video conferencing category, Zoom is uniquely positioned as companies shift to more remote work.
  • Domino’s Pizza (DPZ)
    With people wanting to avoid crowds because of COVID-19, it’s natural to want to order in. Domino’s, as well as other companies that focus on food delivery, stand to benefit in the short term from the virus.
  • Campbell Soup Company (CPB)
    Campbell is the quintessential counter-cyclical stock, and even more so in a prepping environment. When the global outlook is gloomy, people want to stockpile — and soup is a major pantry staple.
  • Teladoc Health, Inc. (TDOC)
    If sitting in a doctor’s office with dozens of other sick people can be avoided, it seems it would be regarded as a prudent decision. For this reason, remote health services are an obvious focus for investors during the pandemic.
  • The Clorox Company (CLX)
    Wash your hands. Wash your hands. Have you heard that you should wash your hands to avoid the spread of the coronavirus? Clorox benefits from this sudden interest in sanitation and cleanliness.
  • Everbridge, Inc. (EVBG)
    When times are uncertain, global decision-makers want to get as much quality information as possible. Everbridge offers a risk intelligence platform that provides this service.
  • Virtu Financial, Inc. (VIRT)
    Whether markets are going up or down, large amounts of volume and volatility are a good thing for financial services companies that make money from high frequency trading.

Not all of these companies are in the green — some have simply traded sideways — but on average, they’ve seen a 12.7% bump in price over the last week.

Whether that will last in a fast-changing news environment is another story.

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Markets

Will Tesla Lose Its Spot in the Magnificent Seven?

We visualize the recent performance of the Magnificent Seven stocks, uncovering a clear divergence between the group’s top and bottom names.

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Will Tesla Lose Its Spot in the Magnificent Seven?

This was originally posted on our Voronoi app. Download the app for free on iOS or Android and discover incredible data-driven charts from a variety of trusted sources.

In this graphic, we visualize the year-to-date (YTD) performance of the “Magnificent Seven”, a leading group of U.S. tech stocks that gained prominence in 2023 as the replacement of FAANG stocks.

All figures are as of March 12, 2024, and are listed in the table below.

RankCompanyYTD Change (%)
1Nvidia90.8
2Meta44.3
3Amazon16.9
4Microsoft12
5Google0.2
6Apple-6.7
7Tesla-28.5

From these numbers, we can see a clear divergence in performance across the group.

Nvidia and Meta Lead

Nvidia is the main hero of this show, setting new all-time highs seemingly every week. The chipmaker is currently the world’s third most valuable company, with a valuation of around $2.2 trillion. This puts it very close to Apple, which is currently valued at $2.7 trillion.

The second best performer of the Magnificent Seven has been Meta, which recently re-entered the trillion dollar club after falling out of favor in 2022. The company saw a massive one-day gain of $197 billion on Feb 2, 2024.

Apple and Tesla in the Red

Tesla has lost over a quarter of its value YTD as EV hype continues to fizzle out. Other pure play EV stocks like Rivian and Lucid are also down significantly in 2024.

Meanwhile, Apple shares have struggled due to weakening demand for its products in China, as well as the company’s lack of progress in the artificial intelligence (AI) space.

Investors may have also been disappointed to hear that Apple’s electric car project, which started a decade ago, has been scrapped.

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