TheStreet.com RealMoney
Make This Bad Market Work for You

By Tim Melvin

About this article:
The carnage has been incredible. We were having a rough enough year before we entered September. Since then, we have had a disastrous year. I decided to see how bad it has become in the market and ran a few simple screens. Of the S&P 500 stocks, 394 of them trade within 5% of new lows. None trade near 52-week highs. Only 10% of the stocks in the index still trade above $50 a share, and 173 are trading below book value. Of the index components, 20% have negative earnings for the past four quarters. Of those 500 stocks, 10 are up on the year. Most of those are basic food companies such as Campbell or retailers specializing in discounted merchandise, such as Family Dollar Stores. The combination of a weakening economy and liquidation trades has been lethal for stock prices. The broad market is down...

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