Ready for a quick investing quiz?
Here’s a great investing quiz from DFA in one of their recent blog posts. There’s a lot of positive out there – the news never focuses on the positive though. Positive doesn’t sell as many ads because it doesn’t keep as many viewers/listeners. It’s important to stay focused on the positives if you’re a long term investor.
Question:
The twenty-two prominent firms listed below share a common characteristic. What is it?
- AT&T Inc.
- Abbott Laboratories
- Allstate Corp.
- Altria Group
- Amgen Inc.
- Berkshire Hathaway ‘A’
- Bristol-Myers Squibb
- Coca-Cola Co.
- Colgate-Palmolive
- Costco Wholesale
- Hershey Co.
- Hormel Foods
- Johnson & Johnson
- Kimberly-Clark
- Eli Lilly & Co.
- Merck & Co.
- Monsanto Co.
- PepsiCo Inc.
- Union Pacific
- Verizon Communications
- Wal-Mart Stores
- Weyerhaeuser Co.
Answer:
If you guessed each firm is a constituent of the S&P 500 Index, you would have been close—but wrong. (Weyerhaeuser is not included.)
If you guessed that each firm pays a dividend, you were close again—but still wrong. (Berkshire Hathaway has not paid a dividend since 1967.)
The correct answer is that the stock price of every firm on the list (and dozens of others) hit a fifty-two-week new high last week.
Constructions companies at new highs?
It is also intriguing to see a long list of homebuilding and building materials firms on the new high list. This includes nine of the eleven stocks in the Standard & Poor’s Supercomposite Homebuilding Sub-Industry Index.
If we cheat and include the previous week, M.D.C. Holdings also makes the list, making it ten out of eleven. KB Home is the lone holdout.
- D.R. Horton1
- Hovnanian Enterprises Cl ‘A’
- Lennar Corp ‘A’1
- Louisiana-Pacific
- Lennox Intl. Inc.
- M.D.C. Holdings1
- M/I Homes1
- Meritage Homes1
- NVR Inc.1
- Pulte Group1
- Ryland Group1
- Standard Pacific1
- Smith (A.O.)
- Toll Brothers1
- USG Corp.
We don’t want to read too much into this exercise, lest we get tempted to start predicting market trends by studying the squiggles in stock price charts. But we suspect many investors would be surprised to learn how many widely held stocks are quietly inching their way higher despite unsettling news from unemployment numbers, European finance ministers, or the presidential campaign trail.
Investors waiting for a more opportune time to purchase stocks may discover that, by the time cheerier news headlines appear, the price tags on a wide range of businesses are sharply higher.
References:
New Highs & Lows, Wall Street Journal, www.wsj.com/newhighs (accessed July 9, 2012).
Standard & Poor’s Stock Guide, June 2012.