The S&P 500's Thanksgiving Leftovers in October 2026

It’s time to check in again for the second-to-last time with the ten worst performing stocks of the S&P 500 (Index: SPX) in 2025. We’ve been tracking them since the day after Thanksgiving Day in 2025, after Seeking Alpha editor Jason Capul named them 2025′s Thanksgiving Leftover stocks.

The fortunes of the group have seesawed since last month’s update. As an equally-weighted index, the group of stocks bottomed at the end of September 2026 about 15% below their combined value on 28 November 2025, then rocketed up to fully recover their post-Thanksgiving Day 2025 level on 22 October 2026. In the less-than-week since, they’ve fallen back to about 94.4% of their value on the day after Thanksgiving Day in 2025.

The market-capitalization weighted version of the ten-stock Thanksgiving Leftover index followed a similar path, only with this portfolio, it bottomed at 80% of its post Thanksgiving Day value on 7 October 2026, then rose to 86.5% of its starting value on 22 October 2026 before dropping back to 84.3% of that initial valuation.

The following chart shows how both the equally-weighted and market capitalization-weighted versions of the 2025 Thanksgiving Leftover stock index have fared from 28 November 2025 through 28 October 2026. Both with respect to each other and also to the whole S&P 500 index as well.

Looking at the individual stocks that make up the 2025 Thanksgiving Leftover stocks, we find two are performing better than the index, Dow Inc. (NYSE: DOW) and Molina Healthcare (NYSE: MOH), as both have benefited from favorable business conditions and, in chemical industry giant Dow’s case, cost cutting and organizational restructuring.

Meanwhile, the two worst stocks of the S&P 500′s 2025 Thanksgiving Leftovers, Lululemon Athletica (NASDAQ: LULU) and The Trade Desk (NASDAQ: TTD), managed to hit new bottoms in October 2026, before lifting a little off them.

The Trade Desk, of course, is no longer part of the S&P 500, while apparel maker Lululemon Athletica has recently been described as having “lost all guidance credibility” as its business outlook has faded. Changing fashion tastes, poor quality, organizational turmoil, and increased competition have combined to take a toll on its prospects, which investors increasingly view as negative.

Of the remaining six stocks, two stand out for having broken out of their losing pattern since August 2026, while another two stand out for their fortunes breaking in the opposite direction during this period.

The two standouts are Factset Research Systems (NYSE: FDS) and Gartner (NYSE: IT), which both had the benefit of shaking off the threat of being overrun by AI technologies and improving their earnings and outlooks.

The two stocks that diminished over this time are Chipotle Mexican Grill (NYSE: CMG) and Alexandria Real Estate Equities (NYSE: ARE). Chipotle has struggled to find its footing in 2026, dealing with a lettuce scare and also its customers having less disposable income because of inflation during 2026. Even so, the stock had seen a positive burst when it was rumored to be a takeover target by Starbucks (NASDAQ: SBUX), but that reversed after the coffee chain killed the rumor. It has been trending downward in the weeks since.

Alexandria Real Estate Equities, whose business involves being a landlord to bioscience and medical companies, is very sensitive to interest rates that have been on the rise in recent months in the U.S. The company’s stock price has gone from being just above its 28 November 2025 value on 22 September 2026 to losing over 25% of its value as of 28 October 2026.

All the individual stock prices changes for all ten of the S&P 500′s 2025 Thanksgiving Leftover stocks since the day after 2025′s Thanksgiving Day are shown in the next chart.

We plan to cover how 2025′s worst stocks of the S&P 500 have fared in 2026 one last time, on the day after Thanksgiving 2026. By then, we should know what other nine companies will join Lululemon Athletica as the worst performing stocks of the S&P 500 index in 2026, which will collectively become the index’ fresh Thanksgiving Leftover stocks.