Best-performing S&P 500 stocks from the bottom of the 2008 market crash

2008 and 2022 have had many similarities: Stock market crash, housing downturn, high levels of debt and investor portfolios going bust.

But there are also many differences: ‘08 was led by a housing bubble — while today’s crash is primarily from a reversal in monetary policies.

Inflation was also healthy in 2008, and the Fed had already raised rates for several years.

Still, investors keep comparing the two market crashes:

The white line represents the S&P 500 in 2022. If 2022/2023 follows 2008 — we may be in for another significant move down.

That’s a big “if.” And all speculation.

One of the biggest questions is whether markets have bottomed or not — and no one really knows the answer.

But if you purchased anywhere near the bottom in past market crashes — you would have done fairly well in the proceeding years.

Just ask investors in these companies — which had massive returns from the 2009 bottom.

Some takeaways:

• Three S&P 500 companies turned out to be 100 baggers in this period.
• Six of these stocks had less than $500M in market cap at their bottoms.
• The largest were Apple (~$76B market cap), Nvidia (~$4B) and Netflix (~$2B).

It’s rare for a company of Apple’s size in 2009 to deliver such large returns. Stocks with the highest upside are typically found to be stocks with smaller market capitalizations — but they also tend to be the riskier.

Still, small-cap companies tend to benefit more when the economy recovers — making it an attractive hunting ground.