Magnificent 7 Miss Out, 2 Cybersecurity Stocks Stand Firm, Retailers Lag In Volatile August: Here Are The Top S&P 500 Gainers And Losers

August saw the equity market make good the losses it experienced post its mid-July peak, with earnings and benign data helping the fightback. With August in the rearview mirror, here’s a look at the leaders and laggards among the S&P 500 Index, a broader gauge of market performance.

3-Part Trend: The month’s trading could be characterized as a tale of three trends. Stocks extended the weakness into August, with the S&P 500 bottoming on Aug. 5, coinciding with the collapse of the global equity markets. The unwinding of the yen carry trades due to the yen’s strength perked up risk aversion, sending Japanese stocks into a tailspin, and the reverberations became evident elsewhere.

The S&P 500 Index fell 4.3% intraday on Aug. 5, which happened to be a Monday. The collapse was promptly dubbed Black Monday 2.0 to differentiate it from the Black Monday crash of Oct. 1987. The CBOE Volatility Index, commonly called VIX, more than doubled to 65.73 intraday before pulling back.

On a positive note, the S&P 500 closed off the lows of the day and was down a more modest 3% by the close.

The market saw a steady recovery from the low through Aug. 22, thanks to a slew of catalysts that reinforced expectations that the Federal Open Market Committee would begin cutting rates at its September meeting.

The strong and rapid recovery pushed traders on the defensive, and the market has been moving sideways since then.

Source: Yahoo Finance

For August, the S&P 500 Index gained 2.28%, ending the month at 5,648.40, off its record closing high of 5,667.20 hit on July 16.

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The Leaders: None of the Magnificent seven stocks, which have been spearheading the broader market uptrend since the start of the 2023, made it to the list of the top 10 gainers. The list featured two cybersecurity companies, namely CrowdStrike Holdings, Inc. CRWD and Fortinet, Inc. FTNT. CrowdStrike was rebounding from its global-outage-induced slump seen since July 19.

Fortinet was helped by a strong post-earnings rally.

Two household and personal care products companies also made the cut, while a management change did the truck for coffee chain Starbucks Corp. SBUX.

The top 10 gainers for the month are:

• Packaged food company Kellanova K (+38.62%) (upside primarily due to the rumors of a buyout by privately-held Mars and the subsequent confirmation of the deal)
• Fortinet (+32.17%)
• Starbucks (+26.52%)
• Axon Enterprise, Inc. AXON (+21.65%); Much of the gains stemmed from a post-earnings bump seen on Aug.7)
• Clorox Company CLX (+21.02%)
• CrowdStrike (+19.54%)
• Kenvue Inc. KVUE (+19.88%)
• Best Buy, Inc. BBY (+16.04%)
• Arch Capital Group Ltd. ACGL (+18.07%)
• Progressive Corporation PGR (+17.78%)

The Laggards: Artificial intelligence server manufacturer Super Micro Computer, Inc. SMCI, which had a dream run after its inclusion in the S&P 500 Index, plummeted following a short report and the delay flagged by the company in filing its 10-K report. Intel Corp. INTC, which is fraught with fundamental risk, was also one of the worst performers for the month.

A few retailers ended up in the list of the top 10 S&P 500 decliners for August.

The top 10 losers for the month are:

• Super Micro (-37.62%)
• Moderna, Inc. MRNA (-35.08%)
• Dollar General Corp. DG (-31.08%)
• Intel (-27.86%)
• Walgreens Boots Alliance, Inc. WBA (-20.19%)
• Dollar Tree, Inc. DLTR (-19.02%)
• Charles River Laboratories International, Inc. CRL (-18.99%)
• Airbnb, Inc. ABNB (-15.94)
• Bath & Body Works, Inc. BBWI (-15.80%)
• Etsy, Inc. ETSY (-15.43%)

Earnings reactions triggered the weakness seen in some of these stocks, including Intel, and Moderna, which reduced its full-year forecast.

With the Fed all but decided on a September rate cut, some of these beaten-down stocks, especially those in the retail space, could stage a turnaround.

The SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust SPY, an exchange-traded fund that tracks the S&P 500 Index, ended Friday’s session up 0.95% at $563.68, according to Benzinga Pro data.

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