Stocks That Lagged During the S&P 500'S Record Decade

A food company assembled out of two giants, an oil producer with 25 years of steady results behind it, and a department store chain in nearly every mall in America all spent the 2010s losing value.

The S&P 500 returned an average of 13% a year between 2010 and 2019, nearly 200% over that stretch. Their stories have less in common than you'd expect. One of them turns on a wildfire season. Another turns on a change in how people buy underwear.

How Steep the Declines Were

The figures below use different starting points and time frames, so they aren't directly comparable to one another. They do give a sense of scale.

Price Charts Leave Out Dividends and Index Removals

Two caveats before the individual cases.

First, a percentage drop in share price is not the same as an investor's total result. Dividends paid along the way add to the return; dividends cut or suspended subtract from what the position was expected to deliver. Say an investor holds a telecom stock mainly for its payout.

If the dividend is trimmed more than once while the share price also slides, the damage shows up in two places at once: the quoted price decline, and the income that was the whole reason for owning it.

Second, getting dropped from a major index is a symptom rather than a cause, but it isn't cosmetic either. Funds that track an index have to sell what leaves it, so a wave of mechanical selling arrives regardless of what any individual investor thinks the company is worth. Two names on this list, GE and PG&E, went through that.

Kraft Heinz Was the S&P 500'S Worst Performer of 2019

Kraft acquired Heinz in 2015, creating one of the largest food companies in the world. The combined business started losing value soon after the deal closed.

An SEC investigation added to the pressure. A 58% slide over five years left Kraft Heinz as the worst performer in the S&P 500 in 2019, an unusual outcome for a portfolio of shelf-stable brands with a defensive reputation.

Apache Lost More Value Than Any Other Energy Stock

Apache beat the S&P 500 through the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s. After roughly 25 years of consistency, it looked like one of the calmer ways to own energy heading into the 2010s.

Then gas prices collapsed in 2014, and Apache's exposure to them showed: it took the worst hit of any energy company on the exchange, $20 billion in losses over three years and 82% of its value across the decade.

Macy's Was Late to Online Retail

Macy's stock peaked in 2015 and fell for the rest of the decade. In 2019 alone it lost more than 45% of its value, as rivals that had committed to online sales earlier pulled ahead. By 2022 Macy's had built a functioning online business of its own, though traditional retailers as a group were still under strain.

General Electric Was Dropped From the Dow in 2018

GE entered the 2000s widely regarded as the most valuable company on earth. Its mix of healthcare, finance, media, and aviation businesses was the case for owning it: if one segment stumbled, the others would carry the load.

The Great Recession undercut that logic, especially on the finance side, where several key investments stopped producing. By 2018 the company was performing badly enough to get dropped from the Dow Jones Industrial Average, an index it had belonged to since the Dow was created, as one of its 30 components.

Carnival Suspended Sailings for More Than a Year

Carnival was a reasonably steady holding until 2018. Between then and 2022 the cruise operator lost nearly 90% of its value, driven in large part by COVID-19, which forced it to halt operations for more than a year.

Carnival has not paid shareholders a dividend since the pandemic began, though it has since restarted sailings.

Mosaic Has Never Matched Its 2008 High

Mosaic is the country's largest producer of phosphate and potash, two fertilizers with fairly predictable demand.

Even so, its performance fell somewhere between 65% and 69% from 2010 onward, and like GE it never recovered from the Great Recession or returned to its 2008 peak. Conditions looked different in 2022: as of that August, Mosaic was outperforming the S&P 500.

PG&E Went Bankrupt After California's Deadliest Fire Season

Pacific Gas & Electric lost more than 59% of its value between 2009 and 2020, and most of that happened in a single year. In 2018 the utility contributed to the deadliest wildfire season in California history, and later pled guilty to 84 counts of involuntary manslaughter.

Earnings fell sharply from there. Facing billions of dollars in fire-related lawsuits, PG&E filed for bankruptcy in 2019, and the S&P 500 removed it that April.

Regulated utilities have a reputation as the low-drama corner of the market, which is what makes the case worth a second look: legal liability can overwhelm a business model that otherwise runs on predictable rates.

Under Armour's Sales Slipped After Its 2015 Peak

Under Armour is the youngest company here. It went public in 2005 and performed well for about ten years. After the stock peaked in 2015, clothing sales began a steady slide, and by 2017 it was the second-worst performing member of the S&P 500.

It hadn't recovered as of 2022. Following a weak quarterly report in May of that year, Under Armour ranked among the three worst-performing stocks of the month.

IBM Missed the Shift to Personal Computers

In the mid-1900s, IBM was the largest computer manufacturer on earth, and it still carried that reputation into the early 2010s. Warren Buffett bought shares and made the case for them publicly.

But as desktops and laptops took over, IBM struggled to keep pace. By 2018, Berkshire Hathaway no longer held IBM stock and had moved heavily into Apple instead. IBM has since pushed toward cloud services and AI, and the stock still gets called undervalued.

Bath & Body Works Swung From Best to Worst in Two Years

Victoria's Secret, Bath & Body Works, and Abercrombie & Fitch once shared a corporate parent, L Brands, formerly Limited Brands, which owned several other mall names as well. The Great Recession squeezed discretionary spending, e-commerce took hold, and revenue fell away.

In 2021 the company separated its two remaining brands into standalone businesses. Bath & Body Works, no longer tied to Victoria's Secret, finished 2021 as one of the best-performing stocks in the S&P 500. It then became one of the worst-performing S&P 500 stocks of 2022.

CenturyLink Fell 63% as Landlines Faded

CenturyLink's stock dropped 63% over the 2010s while customers traded landlines and DSL for cell service and fiber. By 2019 the company, now Lumen Technologies, had shifted its spending toward expanding fiber infrastructure.

The share price has stayed low for years. For anyone holding it as an income stock, there's a wrinkle worth knowing: CenturyLink cut its dividend more than once during the 2010s.

Occidental Petroleum Pays Berkshire an 8% Dividend Until 2029

Occidental didn't fall as fast as Apache, but it didn't escape the 2014 price collapse either, losing 51% of its value over the decade. The gas market wasn't the only factor.

In 2019 Occidental turned to Berkshire Hathaway to finance its purchase of another petroleum company, and a condition of that deal requires Occidental to pay Berkshire an 8% dividend through 2029. Berkshire's interest didn't end there: Buffett increased his stake in the company over the course of 2022.

Twelve Different Failures, Uneven Recoveries

Twelve companies, and no single failure mode among them. Some were caught by a commodity cycle, one by a catastrophic liability, several by customers moving online faster than management did.

The common thread is that each looked defensible at the start of the decade, which is the part that only reads clearly afterward.

Where they stand now varies just as widely. A few may never see their old highs. Mosaic in 2022 and Bath & Body Works in 2021 both got a turn back in the winners' column, and one of them gave it straight back.

All investing carries the risk of losing money, and every figure above describes a stretch of time that has already closed.