With the S & P 500 close to crossing into a bear market as stocks continue their 2022 slide, investors looking for stable names in rocky times have a few opportunities. The broad market index held steady on Thursday. The index was about 18% lower than last year, and is currently 19% below its high. CNBC Pro revealed that stock markets have experienced several bear market periods over the past twenty years. However, some companies managed to survive despite all the destruction. We screened for stocks in the S & P 1500 composite index, using FactSet, that showed the best median returns over each of the last three bear markets – 2007-2008, 2009 and 2020 – and 2022 to date. Additionally, stocks with a loss of more than 20% were excluded from our screening. We also looked for dividend paying stocks with at least 2%. These are the six stocks we discovered: Source: FactSet Campbell Soup had the lowest loss over time with a median of 4.7%. General Mills had the same median loss. As of Thursday, both stocks were the only ones on the list still in the red for the year. Campbell has increased 8%. Clorox, Colgate-Palmolive and Clorox show higher losses than the others, but still lower than 20%. Clorox lost 9.9% of its median income. Colgate-Palmolive’s losses have been steeper in subsequent bear cycles and has had a median loss 15.5%. Gilead Sciences, the exception, is in the non-cyclical consumer market. At 4.5%, Gilead Sciences has the highest dividend yield. Dividend yield is a measure of how much money a company pays each year, as a percentage its share price. Flowers Foods made it to the top with an 8.7% median loss and a 3.3% dividend return. This year, it’s almost down 7%.
