My Canadian Business

> My Portfolio
> Gainers > Losers > Actives
> Mutual Fund Lookup
The Investor 500: The top Canadian stocks

Companies don't have to be huge to land a spot on our Investor 500 ranking, but they do need to be among the biggest. The list is updated quarterly and contains the 500 largest businesses on the TSX and TSX Venture Exchange (by market capitalization). Qualifying companies also have a head office in Canada and at least a year of trading history.

The 500 largest stocks (by market capitalization) are ranked by return for the 12-month period ending December 31, 2008.

In the following tables, we rank the top stocks by return, market value, performance, debt and analyst ratings. We also break them down into large cap, mid cap and small cap categories.

Use this ranking as a stock screener to help you pick the best stocks for your portfolio. As always, do your own research before buying.

How to use these tables

The tables can be sorted in ascending and descending order by clicking on the name of the column of interest.

Clicking on a company name loads a profile page with all of our information about that stock.

Sections of the Investor 500 can be emailed, printed out in a printer-friendly format, or downloaded into a spreadsheet. Custom views can be created for selected screening criteria.

We invite you to share our list on Facebook, Digg, Del.icio.us, Stumble Upon, Newsvine and other social media sites.

Read our complete Methodology.


The complete list: Tables | Spreadsheet download (.xls)

The big 50

For the first time, Fairfax Financial Holdings Ltd. tops the list of Canada’s 50 largest stocks with a 1-year return of 38.3%. Last year, Fairfax was number 47 on the medium-cap list with a comparable return of 25.9%. Large cap companies had an average 1-year loss of 23.7% compared to a positive return of 13.2% last year. This compared favorably with the TSX composite loss of 33.01% in 2008 and return of 9.8% in 2007. Only eight stocks made gains (compared to 33 last year), five of them double-digit or better. During 2008, 42 of the 50 companies on this list had negative 1-year returns compared to 17 companies in 2007. In 2008, the lowest market capitalization on this list was $4.4 billion, down 39% from $7.2 billion in 2007.

The Top 50 companies (measured by market capitalization) span 16 industries, from chemicals and capital markets to food and staples retailing, road and rail and telecommunications. The most companies (13) are in the oil and gas sector. There are six each of commercial banks and insurance companies and five mining companies.

The medium 150

This group’s average 1-year loss of 26.5% was slightly less than the large caps. However, it suffered the largest turndown when compared with 2007’s average return of 68.7%. Eldorado Gold Corp. an operator of gold mines in Turkey and Brazil, led the pack with a return of 65.5%, up from a 7.6% gain in 2007. Only 22 of the 150 mid-cap stocks made gains (compared to 97 in 2007) and of those, only 12 were double-digit or better (compared to 76 in 2007). The market cap requirement to land on this list was more than halved to $509 million from $1.16 billion in 2007.

Of the 41 industries spanning this group, from food products and software to electrical utilities and real estate, the dominant one is oil, gas and consumable fuels, with 34 companies listed. Metals and mining follows with 22 and real estate is third with 13.

The small 300

Small cap stocks also reflected the 2008 market reversal. This group's average one-year loss in 2008 was 35.5% compared with an average positive return of 39.6% in 2007. Of the 300 stocks in this category, only 22 enjoyed a positive return (compared to 170 in 2007). Only 14 had double-digit gains, 90% less than last year's 134. But there's always a big winner. This year it's newcomer Gold Wheaton Gold Corp., which posted a 1-year return of 2,450%. Gold Wheaton purchases gold by-product streams from the production of existing mines or mines under construction. The biggest loser: good old Nortel Networks Corp. lost 97.9% of its share value in one year. By mid-January 2009, you’d have to sell about eight shares of Nortel to buy a litre of gas.

There are 43 industries in this group, everything from airlines and chemicals to biotechnology and machinery. The best-represented industries are metals and mining (65 companies); and oil, gas and consumable fuels (43).