June’s Best Dow Stocks

Published on Friday, 29 June 2012 20:21 Written by Todd Shriber

The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed June and the second quarter in stellar fashion with an astounding 278-point gain on Friday, enabling the SPDR Dow Jones Industrial Average (NYSE: DIA) to jump 2.1% on the session. While April and May were gloomy months for U.S. stocks, both the S&P 500 and the Dow posted in impressive gains in June. For the month, the Dow climbed higher by more than 4%.

In theory, that should mean a wide array of the blue-chip index’s 30 components notched impressive gains in June, but a few stocks truly stood out. Here’s a look at some of the Dow’s best individual performances in June.

Bank of America (NYSE: BAC):

Bank of America was also the Dow’s top performer in the first quarter and were it not for dreadful runs in April and May, the stock would likely be sitting with a much better year-to-date performance than it currently has. Due to the flagging U.S. economy and heightened concerns about Europe’s sovereign debt crisis, financial services stocks have been in traders’ cross hairs.

To that end, Bank of America deserves a lot of credit of gaining almost 10% in June. A 5.7% gain to close the month certainly helped matters.

Merck (NYSE: MRK):

Despite knowing that a decision from the Supreme Court on Obamacare was scheduled to come down sometime in June, investors embraced stodgy pharmaceuticals stocks on the basis of perceived lower volatility. Merck rewarded that thesis with a gain of 11% on the month. That’s nearly triple the 3.7% gain offered by rival Pfizer, also a Dow component. Both Merck and Pfizer sharply outperformed another Dow pharma stock, Johnson & Johnson (NYSE: JNJ), which added just 3% in June.

General Electric (NYSE: GE):

This one might really surprise a lot of investors. General Electric has its hands in a plethora of economically-sensitive industrial business and that should have made the stock vulnerable in June considering all of the mediocre U.S. economic data points investors had to contend with.

Not to mention, GE Capital is a significant driver of GE’s overall value, leading some analysts to view GE as a financial services stock. These two factors should have been damning for the stock in June. Instead, the shares gained 7.7% during the month, cementing GE’s status as the top-performing U.S. conglomerate this year.

3M (NYSE: MMM), another stock viewed as a conglomerate, jumped 4.5% during the month of June.