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Get Four
|  | JANUARY 7, 2005
 STOCK SCREENS By Michael Kaye, CFA Large-Caps with Big Appeal These stocks have been laggards in recent years. This screen finds nine that show promise of outperforming Large-cap stocks have been in a rut for some time now. Five years, to be exact, based on the underperformance of the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index relative to the S&P SmallCap 600 index in the 2000-04 period. Even in the second year of a market rebound, the large-cap benchmark was again outpaced by its smaller cousin in 2004, with the 600 posting a 22% return vs. the 500's 9% advance. But this year, the tide may turn in the big-caps' favor. One reason may be the steady weakness in the U.S. dollar vs. other major currencies. A lower greenback makes U.S. exports more attractive and can help to fatten the bottom lines of U.S. companies with a significant presence in overseas markets -- i.e., large-cap multinationals. BIG FISH. With that in mind, we designed this week's screen. We searched our coverage universe for companies with market caps above $10 billion. That turned up a pretty large list. So we set out to winnow out the most attractive big fish. How? We looked for stocks with S&P's highest investment ranking of 5 STARS, or strong buy. Stocks with that designation are expected by S&P equity analysts to outperform the overall market by a wide margin over the next 6 to 12 months. And then we applied one final filter. We searched for stocks with S&P's highest Fair Value ranking of 5, meaning that the stock is considered significantly undervalued under S&P's proprietary analytical model. These are the stocks that emerged:
 Kaye is an analyst for Standard & Poor's Portfolio Advisors All of the views expressed in this research report accurately reflect the research analyst's personal views regarding any and all of the subject securities or issuers. No part of analyst compensation was, is or will be, directly or indirectly related to the specific recommendations or views expressed in this research report. Standard & Poor's Regulatory Disclosure Any advice, analysis, or recommendations contained in articles labeled "Insight from Standard & Poor's" reflect the views of Standard & Poor's, which operates separately from and independently of BusinessWeek Online. It is possible that BWOL may from time to time publish information that is not consistent with advice, analysis, or recommendations that are published by Standard & Poor's. Standard & Poor's and BusinessWeek Online are each units of The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
BW MALL
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