Part
01
of one
Part
01
What are the Top 10 companies for which stock prices haven't moved in the last 5yrs?
We have used both visual and mathematical interpretation to find the top 10 stocks (by revenue) that have not moved much in the last 5 years. The list includes non-cyclical, mature companies: P&G, Coca Cola, Merck, Pfizer, Southern Company, Verizon Communications, Duke Energy Company, Target Corporation, Exxon Mobil and Monsanto Company. What follows is a deep dive into our method of determining the top 10 companies whose stock prices haven't moved in the last 5 years.
METHODOLOGY
As the top 10 companies are to be ranked by revenue, we have kept our search limited to S&P 100 stocks. The S&P 100 comprises blue chip stocks, which are historically more stable than other stocks in the market.
We looked at 5 year charts of all the stocks in the S&P 100 and then short-listed twenty stocks that visually appeared to have the least movement over the last 5 years. However, we decided to verify this mathematically by calculating the standard deviation for each of the twenty stocks.
Standard deviation is a measure of dispersion of a data set from its mean. It tells us the volatility of the stock in a given period. A low standard deviation means that the data points are closer to the mean and a high standard deviation means that the data points are spread over a wider range of values. A low standard deviation is indicative of range bound movement of the stock and a high standard deviation is indicative of highly volatile movements or trending movements (upwards or downwards).
To calculate the standard deviation for a five-year period, we need closing prices for all trading days in the last five years. We were able to find five-year data starting 13th Aug 2012 and ending 11th Aug 2017. From this we have used four and a half years' data (4th Feb 2013 to 11th Aug 2017) to calculate the standard deviation for each of the twenty stocks.
We have short-listed the top ten stocks based on the following criteria:
1) Standard deviation of the stock
2) Whether the stock has started trending or broken out of a range in the last 6 months or so (as we have not used last 6 months data for calculations)
3) Closeness of current price to the price five years ago
4) Revenue
The first three criteria determine whether the stock has been in a narrow range for the last five years. The last criteria is automatically fulfilled as a result of picking companies from the S&P 100 indices.
Please find detailed standard deviation calculations for all twenty stocks in the attached spreadsheet (21 sheets).
TOP 10
Please note that Walmart and US Ban Corp have been excluded from the top ten as they have recently started trending.
CONCLUSION
The top 10 companies that have not seen a significant price movement in the last five years are mostly CPG, pharmaceutical and utility companies, which are defensive in nature. All the companies listed are mature, well-established and high revenue generating.