Deep Dive: These stocks are down at least 20% from 2021 highs, but Wall Street sees them gaining as much as 87% in 2022

A solid 2021, but look at the cap-weighting

The benchmark S&P 500 index
SPX,
+0.13%
has risen 27.4% during 2021, following a 16.3% in 2020 — two years of pandemic and two years of double-digit gains. (All price changed in this article exclude dividends.)

You probably know the S&P 500 is weighted by market capitalization, but you might not be aware of how extreme the weighting can be. Take a look at the weighting and performance of the top five companies held by the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust
SPY,
+0.10%,
which tracks the S&P 500. Together, they make up 23% of the fund’s portfolio and the index:

SPY and the S&P 500 include two common-share classes for Alphabet Inc.
GOOGL,
+0.05%

GOOG,
-0.01%
and two apiece for four other companies, for a total of 505 stocks.

Stocks in bear markets that analysts love

For a broader list of large-cap stocks listed in the U.S., including those of some of China’s biggest internet players, we added the components of the Nasdaq-100 Index
NDX,
-0.07%,
comprised of the 100 largest Nasdaq-listed companies by market capitalization and tracked by the Invesco QQQ Trust
QQQ,
-0.08%.

After removing duplicates, this left a list of 529 stocks.

Within in the group, 94 are in a bear market — that is, they were down at least 20% from their 2021 intraday highs through Dec. 28, according to data provided by FactSet.

Among the 94, there are 30 with “buy” or equivalent ratings from at least two-thirds of analysts polled by FactSet. Here they are, sorted by the 12-month upside potential implied by the consensus price targets:

You can click the tickers for more about each company. Click here for Tomi Kilgore’s detailed guide to the wealth of information for free on the MarketWatch quote page.