Company October 31 November 30 % CHANGE
With investors once again seeing stocks as an attractive investment, the Publishers Weekly Stock Index rose 5.7% in November, with 11 stock prices moving up and nine down. The Dow Jones Industrial Average had an 8.5% gain in the month. The biggest winner in November was Amazon.com, whose stock price jumped 62.2%; the company's early holiday sales performance was better than expected. Reader's Digest stock rose 27.1% in the month after being battered in October by a series of bad news, including the anthrax scare. Hastings Entertainment, whose stock price has done very well in recent months, fell 39.1% in November as the company's third-quarter loss was higher than projected. After losing almost a third of its value in the middle of the month when it released disappointing third-quarter results, Barnes & Noble's stock price finished the month down 15.9% as the retailer's share price rose by more than $3 on November 30 after some encouraging news about November sales.
Source: Cahners Publishing
Winners
Amazon.com 6.98 11.32 62.2%
Reader's Digest 17.70 22.50 27.1
Borders Group 15.59 19.25 23.5
Courier Corp. 25.00 29.89 19.6
R. R. Donnelley 25.50 29.30 14.9
Losers
Hastings Entertainment 8.28 5.04 -39.1%
Barnes & Noble 36.75 30.90 -15.9
Educational Dev. Corp. 5.74 5.25 -8.5
Scholastic 44.70 43.45 -2.8
Banta 29.05 28.78 -0.9
Publishers Weekly
Stock Index 333.97 353.04 5.7%
Dow Jones Average 9,075.14 9,851.56 8.5%