Standout Stocks: A Study Of 1st Quarter Bull Market Outperformers

The 4^th quarter has come to a close and the markets have finished the year with very impressive gains. Hopefully all of your trading/investment portfolios benefited this year from the markets continued bull run. It’s now time to look for some new ideas for standout stocks in 2014… and in particular the 1^st quarter of 2014. With this in mind, I set out to find a list of standout stocks during the 1^st quarter of the current bull market.

Here is what I used to comprise the list:

• The stocks included in this study came from a *personal watch list
• The tracked 1^st quarter performance went from the closing price of the last trading day in December (of its respective year) to the closing price of the last trading day in March (of its respective year)
• The study goes back 5 years
• The stock had to have a positive 1^st quarter return in at least 4 of the last 5 years
• The average % return in the last 5 years had to beat the avg. return in the 1^st quarter for the S&P 500 of 4.15%

Let’s take a look at the results of the study:

Data sourced from tradingview.com (price range tool). Performance was taken from closing price of the last trading day in December to closing price of the last trading day in March. Used simple math when calculating the avg. 1^st quarter return. Add/subtract the 1^st quarter gains/losses over the last 5yrs and then divide by 5.

A couple things that stood out to me in this study:

1. Standout stocks Tesoro (TSO), Pioneer Resources (PXD), and Cognizant Tech (CTSH) have not had a losing 1^st quarter in the last 5 years. Will the streak go to 6? Time will tell.
2. There are some notable 1^st quarter gains with stocks like Best Buy (BBY) and Apple (AAPL), but those are some of the stocks that had some nasty losses in the 1^st quarter as well.

We all know the past is not necessarily a predictor of the future, so more research and due diligence is necessary. Thank you for reading.

Author is long TSO, PXD, CREE and MU call spreads at the time of publication.  Any opinions expressed herein are solely those of the author, and do not in any way represent the views or opinions of any other person or entity.