By MICHAEL KREY, INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY
Posted 09/04/2011 12:00 AM ET
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CHL * China Mobile Ltd Adr EBAY * Ebay Inc GOOG Google Inc ISRG * Intuitive Surgical Inc JAZZ * Jazz Pharmaceuticals Inc MA * Mastercard Inc Cl A SPRD Spreadtrum Comm Inc Ads SWI Solarwinds Inc V * Visa Inc Cl A * Top-Rated Company
1" 2" 3" Talk about dog days. Or at least, a dog month. True, September sure isn't starting out as any prize, but most of us are happy August is in the rear-view mirror.
The trouble started in late July, with Europe's economic woes and the U.S. debt ceiling game of chicken. But the problems accelerated after Standard & Poor's downgraded the U.S. credit rating on Aug. 5. Despite ending the month on a four-day win streak (which September promptly ended), August was a real dog.
For the month, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 4.36%. The S&P 500 dropped 5.68%. And the tech-heavy Nasdaq composite plummeted 6.42%.
Six of the 17 IBD 50 tech/biotechs ended the month on the wrong side of the ledger. But which held up best? These five enjoyed the biggest gains in August — all rose more than 5% — certainly a sign of strength. They are listed by their IBD 50 rankings:
9. MasterCard (MA). The credit card company rose 8.73% for the crummy month, the third-best showing among the IBD 50 techs. It's a sort-of tech, since online payments and mobile payments will be a bigger and bigger part of its business, markets in which it will battle not only conventional rivals like Visa (V) (also an IBD 50 stock), but eBay's (EBAY) PayPal and Google (GOOG). It started out Aug. on the right foot, on Aug. 3 reporting Q2 profit that breezed past analyst views. "In the face of crappy news about the economy, to see growth numbers like this is encouraging," Leonard DeProspo, an analyst with Janney Capital Markets, told IBD in our earnings story. "We weren't expecting numbers this good." The stock hit an all-time high of 340 the first trading day after its report. And it hung very close to there most of the month, until falling 2.8% on Friday to close at 320.
21. Intuitive Surgical (ISRG). The maker of the de Vinci surgical system, a system at the forefront of minimally invasive, robotic-assisted surgery, just made it onto our Top 5 at No. 5, rising a solid 5.63% in August. The stock had a nice run late month, resetting its base count. Even after a poor start in the first two trading days in Sept., the stock is solidly above its 10-week moving average. This after the medtech hit an all-time high of 415 on July 21. Its Q2 EPS jumped 33%, to $2.91, and sales rose 21%, to $425.7 million.