There’s nothing complicated about today’s article. It simply examines, with the aid of the accompanying table, the latest 12-month performances of the share prices of nearly 40 well-known companies.

The 39 firms have been arranged alphabetically according to their primary industrial activity. Not all sectors are represented. One obvious omission is ‘health care’. CVS and Walgreens-Boots under ‘General Retail’ will have to serve as proxies.

But there has been an attempt to capture companies with direct or indirect (i.e., through capital spending on manufacturing facilities, retail space, etc.) ties to construction.

For each company, the two right-hand, percentage-change columns compare the current share price with: (1) the latest 12-month low; and (2) the latest 12-month high.

With respect to 12-month lows, percentage changes that are 50.0% or more have been shaded lightly in gray.

With respect to 12-month highs, percentage changes that are -20.0% or more steeply negative have been shaded in red.

Percentage changes that are only off by -5.0% or less compared with their 12-month highs appear in green.

The first point to notice from the data is that almost all the latest 12-month lows occurred last year. Only nine of the 37 companies have experienced latest 12-month lows in 2018.

Furthermore, 25 of the 37 lows that occurred last year happened in August, at the beginning of the latest 12-month period.

As for latest 12-month highs, 34 out of 37 of those have occurred this year, in 2018.

This pattern of most lows occurring last year and almost all highs coming this year suggests a desirable trend of growing value in the stock markets. It should also be noted, though, that this year’s month with the most highs (12) has been January, indicating that the upward momentum in equity prices dissipated somewhat after the start of 2018.

Eight of the 37 companies – Armstrong (+55.4%); Fluor (+52.6%); ConocoPhillips (+64.2%); Valero (+71.6%); Amazon (+100.5%); Micron (+59.4%); Netflix (+90.9%); and Twitter (+104.7%) − have current share values that are 50% or greater than their latest 12-months lows. There are another three that barely miss the +50% benchmark – BestBuy (+49.2%); Costco (+49.1%); and Microsoft (also +49.1%).    

Four of the eight strongest advances have been among high-tech firms. Two companies have seen a doubling in their share values versus their latest 12-month lows, Amazon (+100.5%) and Twitter (+104.7%).

Turning to the red shaded boxes, there are 11 companies with current share prices that are down by 20.0% or more versus their latest 12-month highs. Only three of those companies are down by significantly more than -20.0% − Ford (-27.8%); Haliburton (-29.7%); and Twitter (-30.0%).

There are three companies, all in the high-tech sector, with present share prices that are both up by more than 50.0% versus their near-term lows and down by more than 20.0% versus their near-time highs – Micron, Netflix and Twitter. They’ve been on a roller-coaster ride.

The true winners at this stage of the investing cycle, however, are those companies with percentage changes that are in green boxes.

The green boxes have been reserved for share prices that are either at or close to (i.e., within -5.0% of) their latest 12-month highs. There are 11 such companies – Louisiana-Pacific (-2.8%); Armstrong (-1.5%); Sherwin-Williams (-1.3%); Best Buy (-0.4%); Costco (0.0%); ConocoPhillips (-4.3%); Amazon (-1.9%); Apple (0.0%); Microsoft (-2.9%); and Roper Technologies (-1.9%). (By way of disclaimer, ConstructConnect is a Roper Technologies’ company.)

Among those 10, three are standouts. Costco and Apple are currently at their latest 12-month highs and Best Buy has pulled back by only a fraction (-0.4%).