Good Riddance '02: It Can't Get Worse

It comes as no surprise that cable stocks fared far worse than the Dow and NASDAQ last year. But we were surprised by just how bad the numbers actually were. None of the MSOs could come close to the Dow’s 17% drop; and only 1 MSO fared better than NASDAQ’s 33% decline (that was Cox [COX], which dropped 31%). Only 5 stocks CableFAX follows each day finished the year better than they started; and a whopping 19 stocks posted losses greater than 75% in ’02. Not surprisingly, cable vendors and tech companies were the hardest hit. Sony [SNE] was the best performing "tech" stock even with its 10% drop. More than 1/2 of the tech stocks we cover (25 of 39) posted losses bigger than 50%. Programmers seemed to fare the best, with Scripps [SSP] (+13%) and Fox [FOX] (+1%) actually showing gains. Crown [CRWN] (-79%), On Command (-77%) and New Frontier [NOOF] (-69%) were the poorest performing programmer stocks.