January Effect: 5 Best-Performing Dow Stocks

They call it the “January Effect.”

Whether it’s the by-product of those Wall Street guys reinvesting their legendary end-of-the-year bonuses or individual investors jumping back into the market after selling for year-end tax reasons, the Dow Jones Industrial Average historically gets a nice little (and sometimes huge) bump during the first month of the year.

This January was no exception.

The Dow rallied up 415.35 points, or 3.4%, in January – the best January percentage gain since 1997.

Here’s an interactive slide show highlighting the 5 best-performing Dow component stocks for January 2012. See if you can figure out what they all have in common.

Also see:

The 10 Best-Performing Dow Stocks of 2011

The 10 Worst-Performing Dow Stocks of 2011