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Looking over the stocks of several dozen locally based companies, you'd be hard pressed to detect anything wrong with the economy or the financial markets. The Dow rose almost 20 percent in 2009, and many Socal companies did better than that - Disney up 43.7 percent, Health Net 113.9 percent, KB Home 98.6 percent, and so forth. Now keep in mind that many of these stocks have been in recovery mode from the massive hits they took in late 2008 and early 2009, and as a result the rebounds should not be considered all that comforting. L.A.-based KB, for example, continues to struggle in the homebuilding business, despite a 100 percent runup in its stock. The other point is that investors have waded into stocks more out of desperation than confidence. Actually, they're wading into most anything that offers a better return than CDs and other fixed-rate products. All of which creates an unsettling disconnect between Wall Street and Main Street, though that gap should narrow in 2010 as the economy gets a little better and the equities markets get a little worse. One down signal for stocks: The tiny number of bearish newsletter writers, a counter-intuitive indicator that often (but not always) points to a stock slide. Oh well, who the hell knows, right? Let's just stick with 2009, which is already in the books.
--Activision +21.8%
--Amgen -2%
--CPK +25.5%
--Cheesecake Factory +113.8%
--Disney +43.7%
--DreamWorks +58.2%
--City National -4.96%
--East West Bank -67.7%
--Guess +179.8%
--Health Net +113.9%
--Jacobs Engineering -21.8%
--KB Home +98.6%
--Hot Topic -31.5%
--Macerich +128.1%
--Maguire +3.4%
--Mattel +29.6%
--99 Cents Stores +19.6%
--Northrop +28.5%
--Occidental Petroleum +33.5%
--Pacific Sunwear +128.7%
--Ryland +13.6%
--Skechers +127.6%
--Stamps.com -9.2%
--THQ +10.5%
--True Religion +44.2%
--Wet Seal +19.4%
Mark Lacter created the LA Biz Observed blog in 2006. He posted
until the day before his death on Nov. 13, 2013.