What are we looking for?
The best and worst stocks on the TSX for 2010.
More about today's screen
This is a simple screen in which we look back at the best and worst stocks and trusts on the TSX by price return over the last year. We'll set a minimum market capitalization of $100-million so that we can exclude penny stocks.
What did we find out?
If you love small commodity stocks, then you stood a decent chance of hitting a home run last year. The best-of list is dominated by these names. The worst-of list is more of a mixed bag, with tech companies such as Aastra Technologies and Com Dev International.
Investors also stood a decent chance of making money last year, as about 760 names passed the minimum $100-million market-cap requirement and about 620 of those names produced a positive return.
It was clearly a year when smaller names did well. The S&P/TSX composite produced a return last year of 14.5 per cent not including dividends. From the names in our screen yesterday, about two of three beat the composite and about three out of five names that beat the composite had market caps of less than $1-billion.
Scott Adams