Admittedly, we've only been following the ten worst performing component stocks of the S&P 500 (Index: INX) in 2025 for the last four months, but we're starting to think that many, if not most, of these stocks would not have made very good investments during that time.
If you're just joining this series, the Thanksgiving Leftover Stocks are a group of ten stocks that Seeking Alpha's Jason Capul identified as "Thanksgiving leftovers no one wants". Four month later, that's mostly true, but with one notable exception.
That exception is Dow Inc. (NYSE: DOW). Back on 28 November 2025, the chemical industry giant was trading at $23.85 per share. Four months later, through the close of trading on 25 March 2026, the company's share price has risen to $39.63. Or rather, its value has increased to be 166% of what it was on the day after Thanksgiving 2025, as the company's outlook has brightened in response to the geopolitical turmoil disrupts the supply chains of its foreign competition.
The following spaghetti chart presents 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.
Aside from Dow, the only other company whose stock has registered a sustained increase is Deckers Outdoor (NYSE: DECK). The footwear designer behind popular sneaker and boot brands like Hoka, Teva, and UGG has seen its stock grow to $100 per share at the close of trading on 25 March 2026, 122% of its post-Thanksgiving Day 2025 level.
The remaining eight Thanksgiving Leftover stocks are doing less well than the S&P 500, which itself is just 96.2% of its day-after-Thanksgiving-Day value. Five of these eight firms are bunched within ten percent of the S&P 500's level, but the remaining three are doing much, much worse. Here's a quick summary of their share prices on 25 March 2026:
- Factset Research Systems (NYSE: FDS) - Share Price: $193.78 (69.9% of 28 November 2025 value)
- Gartner (NYSE: IT) - Share Price: $150.23 (64.5% of 28 November 2025 value)
- Trade Desk (NASDAQ: TTD) - Share Price: $21.97 (55.5% of 28 November 2025 value)
We covered The Trade Desk's decline in the previous edition, but observe the ad-tech firm's ongoing implosion has recently gotten worse as an audit firm advised its clients to avoid it. Through this point of 2026, The Trade Desk is the worst performing component stock of the entire S&P 500 index.
The other two poor performers, Gartner and FactSet, aren't far behind. Gartner, an IT research firm and consulting house whose business model is directly in the crosshairs of AI technology, which promises to do much of the same things that Gartner does at much lower costs. Financial data provider FactSet faces a very similar existential challenge from AI technologies, which the trend for its stock price is capturing.
As for how 2025's Thanksgiving Leftover Stocks are doing as a group, we find they are underperforming the S&P 500. If we treat them like an equal-weighted index, they're doing horribly, but if we weight them by their market capitalization, like the S&P 500 itself, they're still doing worse, but not anywhere near as badly. The following chart visualizes how they've done during the last four months:
Perhaps all this will change in the next month when we next update how 2025's Thanksgiving Leftover stocks are doing in 2026. Or not. If you were going to place a bet on the outcome, would you take the over or the under?
Labels: investing, SP 500, thanksgiving
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