Rural stock index scored better than the bigs in '08

The Daily Yonder summarized the 2008 performance of the "Yonder 40," the 40 stocks it has picked to represent the rural economy, and found that those stocks beat the Dow Jones Industrial Index, the NASDAQ composite and the Standard and Poor's 500. The Yonder 40 was down 31.3 percent , compared to -34% for the Dow, -38% for S&P, and -40.5% for NASDAQ.

"The Yonder 40 was helped by having some of the best performing stocks in the major indices," co-editor Bill Bishop writes. "The two best stocks in the S&P 500 in 2008 were UST, the smokeless tobacco producer, and Family Dollar, the Main Street retailer," while "Wal-Mart, a DY 40 stalwart, was one of only two stocks among the 30 companies in the Dow Industrials to show positive returns in 2008." (Read more)