Earlier this month, we ran a competition for our visitors, challenging them to pick the stock they thought would perform best. The pre-selected list of 34 had been carefully selected by The Armchair Trader team as potential recovery stocks in the aftermath of the Coronavirus pandemic.
With prizes to be won as part of our King of the 34 competition, we are monitoring all 34 stocks over the period of 5th May to 7th July and will be writing about these stocks on a regular basis.
To mark the end of the first week of the competition, we have picked the top 5 performers and offer our thoughts on each. The full list of stocks and performance can be found below. There’s a long way to go but our top 5 are off to a great start.
Top 5 performers
Top of our list of performers over the first week is Square [NYSE: SQ], the commerce ecosystem App that enables business to start, run & grow. The stock is up 17.2% in a week following their first quarter earnings despite seeing losses more than double as the payment processor filled reserve funds to deal with expected problems for its merchant customers stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the business saw strong signs of momentum with its consumer-facing Cash App, benefiting from US consumers choosing to have their stimulus payments directly deposited to the Cash App, helping drive their highest-ever monthly direct-deposit volumes in April.
Zoom [NASDAQ: ZM], the cloud based meetings, messaging & conferencing provider was the next best riser, up 15.9%. The business has been bolstered by COVID-19 travel restrictions as corporations, schools, health care professionals, non-profits, etc., have been forced to conduct more or all their typical day-to-day activities remotely. A popular choice in our competition, it remains to be seen if the business can continue its meteoric rise as the global lockdown eases.
Huya [NYSE: HUYA], the live streaming gaming platform is in third position this week with a price increase of 11.2%. Despite the general negative sentiment towards Chinese stocks from the US, the business has clearly benefited from the global lockdown and clearly has some strong growth prospects.
Mobile diabetes monitoring devices provider Dexcom [NASDAQ: DXCM] has seen its share price rise 8.5% since 5th May as demand increases for blood sugar monitoring devices as many households stay at home, avoiding travelling to clinics and hospitals. As with Zoom, it will be interesting to see if the business can continue its stellar growth as the coronavirus related lockdown eases.
Hydrogen energy equipment manufacturer ITM Power [LON: ITM] concludes our top 5 this week having seen a rise of 8.2% in its share price. The business continues to win funding grants and has today announced the establishment of subsidiary, ITM Motive, which will own and operate a network of eight publicly accessible hydrogen refueling stations, expanding to 11 by the end of 2020.
Our King of the 34 performance table to 13 May 2020
| Company | % change |
| Square | +17.2 |
| Zoom | +15.9 |
| Huya | +11.2 |
| Dexcom | +9.5 |
| ITM Power | 8.2 |
| Reckett & Benckiser | +6.5 |
| Walt Disney | +4.8 |
| Rio Tinto | +4.4 |
| Flutter Entertainment | +4.3 |
| Netflix | +4.1 |
| Hikma Pharmacuetical | +4.0 |
| Remedy Entertainment | +4.0 |
| WM Morrison | +3.4 |
| Newmont | +2.7 |
| AVEVA | +2.3 |
| Unilever | +1.4 |
| Mastercard | +1.2 |
| Harvia | 0.0 |
| Microsoft | -0.1 |
| Eli Lilly | -0.4 |
| Regeneron | -0.6 |
| Pfizer | -1.5 |
| Rentokil Initial | -2.2 |
| Homeserve | -2.5 |
| CIBC | -2.9 |
| Burberry | -3.7 |
| Equinix | -4.3 |
| BP | -7.0 |
| Pets at Home | -7.1 |
| Shopify | -9.0 |
| Ibstock | -9.4 |
| Just Eat | -12.2 |
| Chorus Aviation | -13.6 |
| Forterra | -19.5 |
- You can find out more about our King of the 34 stocks here
- How did our stock picks get on in April?
Data sourced from SharePad. The UK’s no.1 investment data & analysis software for Private Investors as voted for by FT/Investors Chronicle readers. Discover the advantage at www.sharescope.co.uk/sharepad.
