5 Stocks That Have Crushed the Market This Year
With the S&P 500 down by about 20% in 2022, it isn't so easy to find stocks that are in positive territory for the year. That said, there are areas of strength, even in this market. Oil equipment and services company Baker Hughes (NASDAQ: BKR), aviation services specialist AAR (NYSE: AIR), (NYSE: HUBB), advanced composites maker Hexcel (NYSE: HXL), and aerospace and defense giant Raytheon Technologies (NYSE: RTX), and electrical products manufacturer Hubbell (NYSE: HUBB) are all up this year. Let's consider why, and whether they are still good buys from here.
Though Baker Hughes stock is up by 3% this year, it has significantly underperformed its key peers, Schlumberger and Halliburton. The strong results that oil services and equipment players are delivering all come down to the stubbornly high price of oil -- benchmark West Texas Intermediate crude is still over $83 a barrel despite widespread fears that a recession is coming.
The relative underperformance of Baker Hughes shares can be blamed on a couple of disappointing earnings reports that were characterized by charges related to its activities in Russia and supply chain difficulties in securing components. However, those issues shouldn't be recurring and management has already launched a restructuring plan intended to cut costs by $150 million annually. As such, it has an opportunity to catch up to the margins generated by its peers.
Source Fool.com
