Here we are, three months after Thanksgiving 2025. How are the Thanksgiving Leftover Stocks of the S&P 500 (Index: SPX) doing?
The Thanksgiving Leftover Stocks are a group of ten stocks that Seeking Alpha's Jason Capul identified as "Thanksgiving leftovers no one wants". Going into Thanksgiving 2025, these were the worst performing stocks of the index, having lost anywhere from 41.7% to 70.1% of their value up to that point of the year.
We've been tracking the daily ups and downs of these stocks since Thanksgiving 2025, creating two hypothetical stock indices to track them. One is a simple equal-weighted index, consisting of an equal number of shares of each stock. The other is a market capitalization-weighted index, like the S&P 500 itself, which we introduced in the previous edition of this series. We're comparing the performance of both of our Thanksgiving Leftover indices with that of the S&P 500.
The following chart shows where each of these indices stand after one quarter.
There have been dramatic changes since the previous edition. One month ago, both Thanksgiving Leftover Stock indices were handily beating the S&P 500. But now, through the end of trading on 25 February 2026, we find the S&P 500 is outperforming both having reached a value 101.4% of its value on the day after Thanksgiving 2025.
The value of the market cap-weighted version of the Thanksgiving Leftover Stocks has dropped to be 97.7% of its post-Thanksgiving Day value, but the equal-weighted version has lost 11.5% of its value, clocking in at 88.5% of its value on 28 November 2025.
The following spaghetti chart reveals the performance of each of the ten Thanksgiving Leftover Stocks with respect to the S&P 500, each indexed with respect to their closing values on 28 November 2025.
Three of the ten Thanksgiving Leftover stocks have beaten the S&P 500 in the last quarter: Deckers Outdoor (NYSE: DECK), Dow Inc. (NYSE: DOW), and Chipotle Mexican Grill (NYSE: CMG), which have risen to be 135.7%, 125.8%, and 108.6% of their values recorded on 28 November 2025.
Another three, Alexandria Real Estate Equities (NYSE: ARE), Fiserv (NASDAQ: FISV), and Molina Healthcare (NYSE: MOH) are treading water, coming within a few percent but still below the performance of the S&P 500.
The final four Thanksgiving Leftover Stocks however are still being clobbered by bears. Of these, Lululemon Athletica (NASDAQ: LULU) has done the best, dropping to 81.1% of its Thanksgiving Leftover Day value. Gartner (NYSE: IT) and Factset Research Systems (NYSE: FDS) are worth 78.4% and 74.5% what they were on 28 November 2025. But The Trade Desk (NASDAQ: TTD) is by far the worst, having dropped to 63.6% of its Day-After-Turkey-Day price.
Which is really amazing when you consider that to even be on this list, it had already registered the second worst performance of the individual stock components that make up the S&P 500 index. Since the beginning of trading on 2 January 2025, The Trade Desk's share price has fallen 78.8% in value, dropping from $117.73 to $24.94 per share on 25 February 2026.
That's a performance that raises questions of whether TTD will remain within the S&P 500 index. Seeking Alpha reports The Trade Desk's market capitalization is $12.06 billion, but that was before the firm reported better than expected earnings but a disappointing outlook after the closing bell on 25 February 2026.
That's less than the $13.36 billion market cap reported by Seeking Alpha for the Class B shares of News Corp (NWS), which was the smallest company by market cap in the S&P 500. If its bad fortune persists, Standard and Poor's next adjustment to its flagship index could see the Thanksgiving Leftover Stocks of the S&P 500 drop from ten to nine members this year.
Labels: ideas, SP 500, stock market, thanksgiving
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