October is still only a little more than 15 trading days old, but there are already 31 stocks in the S&P 500 that are down over 15% on the month. The table below lists each of those 31 names, and while it’s not uncommon to see volatile stocks from the Technology or Consumer Discretionary sectors topping the list of worst performers during a market decline, not a single one of the ten worst performers so far this month comes from either sector. As shown in the table, the sectors represented in the list of ten worst performers are Industrials, Health Care, and Materials, and the stocks are all down well over 20% already this month!
The worst performing Technology stock on the list is Advanced Micro (AMD), which is down just under 20%, while Newell (NWL) is the worst performing stock from the Consumer Discretionary sector with a decline of 16.4%. Looking at this overall list of names, it’s cyclical stocks which dominate with eight stocks from the Industrials sector alone. Meanwhile, no stocks from the Consumer Staples, Financials, Real Estate, or Utilities sectors made the list. So much weakness in a number of large-cap cyclical stocks has been a big reason why the ratio of cyclicals to defensives has pulled back so far over the last month.
