Fortune’s “Most Admired Companies” Full Of Poor Investments

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Mar 5, 4:50PM EST

Fortune’s "Most Admired Companies". All big companies want to be on the list. Look at the top 20:

GE (GE), Starbucks (SBUX), Toyota (TM), Berkshire Hathaway (BRK-A), Southwest Air (LUV), Fedex (FDX), Apple (AAPL), Google (GOOG), Johnson & Johnson (JNJ), Procter & Gamble (PG), Goldman Sachs (GS), Microsoft (MSFT), Target (TGT), 3M (MMM), Nordstrom (JWN), United Parcel (UPS), American Express (AXP), CostCo (COST), Pepsi (PBG), and Wal-Mart (WMT).

It would not make much of an investment portfolio. Over the last year, Starbucks is down over 15%. Southwest Air, down almost 10%. Fedex, flat. Johnson & Johnson, up 7% which is less than the Dow. Procter, up 6%. Microsoft, up 4%. 3M, up 2%. UPS, down 8%. American Express, up 4%. Costco, up 4%. Pepsi, up 5%. Wal-Mart, up 6%.

Are there some winners on the list. Absolutely, lead by Apple, Toyota, and Nordstom.

But, in general, it would appear that having shares up 1% over the last year and losing out to the Dow would make a company a good candidate.

Douglas A. McIntyre

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.