With 2006 officially in the books, we analyzed the best and worst performing US stocks of the year. In the chart below,we divided the 4,000+ US stocks into deciles based on market cap and calculated their average performances.

As the chart illustrates, this year there was no clear decile which outperformed all the others. This is in contrast to prior years where gains have been concentrated in the small cap area. In fact , the second best performing decile of the group was the magacaps (decile 10) which is noteworthy given that gains in these stocks "create" the most wealth.

Check back later this weekend for the top performing individual stocks.  Happy New Year!