The Top Stocks of 2012

Last year’s profile of the best-performing stocks in the S&P 500 was a depressing read full of mining concerns, discount stores, and credit-card companies trading up on regulatory favors. This year’s list is a more optimistic, more diverse collection, not least because the market as a whole did much better. Cabot Oil & Gas topped last year’s list at 107 percent growth, which would only be good for fourth place this time around. Visa’s 43.19 percent growth last year wouldn’t have made the top 40 this time around. Corporate America, in other words, had a much stronger run in 2012. These are the companies you wish you’d bought last Christmas: 1. Sprint Nextel Opening price: $2.34. Dec. 26 price: $5.56. Growth: 138 percent The extraordinary performance of the third banana of American wireless telephony was less about anything Sprint did than about Japanese telecom giant S...