With a new decade upon us, let's look back at the 2010s to see which stocks were on the best and worst performing lists. 

Answer:

• Kraft/Heinz: Worst (58% price decline)
• Netflix: Best (+3787% price increase)
• Under Armour: Worst (60% price decline)
• Ulta Beauty: Best (+1206% price increase)

Questions:

• Why do you think that Netflix and Ulta Beauty have done so well as stocks over the past decade? 
• Why do you think that Kraft Heinz and Under Armour have performed so poorly?
• What similarities do you see among companies on the best performing list? worst performing list? 
• What types of companies do you think will do best over the next decade? Explain. 

Here's the ready-to-go slides for this Question of the Day that you can use in your classroom.

Behind the numbers (Yahoo):

Netflix: It wasn’t even close. Netflix stock was just $7.87 at the start of 2010; however since then, the stock has surged a whopping 3,787% and closed at $306.16 per share Tuesday...

Ulta Beauty: Ulta debuted on the public market in October 2007, and the stock steadily gained and hit record highs of $368.83 on July 15, 2019. The U.S. prestige beauty industry is booming and reached $18.8 billion in 2018, according to market research firm NPD Group. According to the NPD Group, skincare grew 13% and contributed to 60% of the U.S. prestige beauty industry’s total gains in 2018...

Kraft Heinz: However, it’s been a rocky road for the company ever since, and 2019 was particularly difficult for Kraft Heinz. First-quarter earnings results were delayed due to an SEC investigation into its accounting and procurement practices. In February, Kraft Heinz revealed a massive $15 billion write down of its Kraft and Oscar Mayer brands and slashed its dividend by 36% to 40 cents per share from 62.5 cents per share. 

Under Armour: Under Armour was started by founder Kevin Plank in his grandmother’s basement in Washington D.C. in 1996. The company then went public November 18, 2005 and was the first U.S. company in five years to double on its first day of trading. Following its IPO, Under Armour stock skyrocketed and hit all-time highs of $52.94 per share on September 14, 2015. However, after hitting those levels, the stock has been on a steady descent ever since. After aggressive sales growth for a couple years, Under Armour’s streak ended at the end of 2016 when sales growth fell below 20%. 

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Play an investing game sure to engage your students (and teach them the challenges of picking individual stocks too!). It's called STAX (in the NGPF Arcade) and has been played over 800,000 times in 2019! 

About the Author

Tim Ranzetta

Tim's saving habits started at seven when a neighbor with a broken hip gave him a dog walking job. Her recovery, which took almost a year, resulted in Tim getting to know the bank tellers quite well (and accumulating a savings account balance of over $300!). His recent entrepreneurial adventures have included driving a shredding truck, analyzing executive compensation packages for Fortune 500 companies and helping families make better college financing decisions. After volunteering in 2010 to create and teach a personal finance program at Eastside College Prep in East Palo Alto, Tim saw firsthand the impact of an engaging and activity-based curriculum, which inspired him to start a new non-profit, Next Gen Personal Finance.