Key Points

• The S&P 500 index rebounded in May and continued its winning streak through June.

• Not all S&P 500 stocks, however, made investors money.

• The top two worst-performing stocks in the index hit their 52-week lows in June.

• 10 stocks we like better than Lululemon Athletica Inc. ›

The S&P 500 (SNPINDEX: ^GSPC) index rose 5% in June, but there were plenty of laggards among the index's 500 stocks. The two worst-performing stocks in the S&P 500 fell by double-digit percentages. Notably, both were consumer stocks.

Image source: Getty Images.

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Lululemon Athletica

Lululemon Athletica (NASDAQ: LULU) stock plummeted over 20% on a single trading day in June, marking one of its biggest intraday falls in history, after reporting poor numbers. It ended the month down 25%.

Lululemon's same-store sales grew by only 1% year over year, while its operating margin fell by 110 basis points to 18.5% in the first quarter. With tariff-driven costs eating into its profits, Lululemon slashed its earnings outlook for the full year by almost 25% to $14.68 per share at the midpoint.

However, Lululemon reaffirmed its sales growth guidance of 7% to 8% and is raising prices and diversifying sourcing channels to mitigate the impact of tariffs. Lululemon doesn't manufacture but outsources production to countries like Vietnam, Cambodia, and Sri Lanka. Lululemon, however, still gets almost 75% revenue from the Americas.

After June's fall, Lululemon stock is trading at a price-to-earnings (P/E) of 16, less than half its five-year average P/E.

J.M. Smucker

J.M. Smucker (NYSE: SJM) stock tanked 12.8% to a 52-week low of $93.30 per share in June after reporting 3% and 13% declines in sales and adjusted earnings per share (EPS), respectively, for its fourth quarter of fiscal 2025. Low demand for dog snacks and sweet baked goods, the recent divestment of pet food brands, and rising costs were largely to blame.

Smucker expects total sales to grow by only 2% to 4% in fiscal 2026, versus 7% last year, and adjusted EPS to fall by 11%.

Smucker's Uncrustables brand, however, reported double-digit sales growth in Q4 and is close to hitting a billion dollars in sales. Meanwhile, Smucker continues to generate solid cash flows and is taking "decisive actions" to revive its sweet baked segment, which has struggled since acquiring Twinkies maker Hostess Brands in 2023.

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Neha Chamaria has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends J.M. Smucker and Lululemon Athletica Inc. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

President Donald Trump's sweeping tariffs have thrown a monkey wrench into the growth plans for some of the largest companies in the U.S. Nucor (NYSE: NUE), however, remains undeterred, and its CEO Leon Topalian has even publicly supported Trump's tariff policy. The Trump administration, after all, imposed a 50% tariff on steel and aluminum imports effective June 4, and that should work in favor of Nucor, also North America's largest and most diversified steel producer.

Nucor is already sitting on its highest backlog ever and just provided an upbeat guidance for its second quarter. Nucor is also a Dividend King -- a label only a handful of publicly listed companies in the U.S. can boast of -- and recently declared its 209th consecutive quarterly dividend. The steel stock, however, is still trading almost 39% off its all-time highs as of this writing, making it a dividend juggernaut you'd want to buy hand over fist on the dip.

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Image source: Getty Images.

Why Nucor is primed to grow under Trump

In a post-first quarter interview with CNBC, Topalian revealed that Nucor's backlog is at its highest ever in the history of the company, reflecting strong demand for steel and steel products.

Meanwhile, Nucor increased the prices of some of its core products like hot-rolled coil effective June 9, soon after Trump imposed 50% tariffs on steel and aluminum imports under Section 232 trade policy to protect America's steel and aluminum industries from unfair trade practices, competition, and import dumping.

Nucor already expects higher prices to drive earnings across all three of its segments -- steel mills, steel products, and raw materials -- in the quarter ending July 5. Importantly, Nucor expects its core business, steel mills, to record the largest earnings growth. Steel mills accounted for 61% of total external sales in fiscal year 2024. Nucor is a vertically integrated company and sells 80% of the steel produced externally while using the remaining to manufacture steel products.

Vertical integration is also among Nucor's biggest competitive advantages. Since Nucor's steel mills manufacture steel mainly from scrap produced in-house by its raw materials segment, the company is insulated from external raw material cost and supply shocks. To top that, the electric arc furnaces Nucor uses to manufacture steel are far more flexible and cost effective than the traditional blast furnaces.

Nucor is now building a large steel mill in West Virginia that could come online by late 2026 to serve non-residential construction and infrastructure markets. Meanwhile, it is adding more value-added products and diversifying its product mix to boost margins. Examples include its recent acquisitions of a data center infrastructure company and a manufacturer of high-speed commercial doors.

These moves, combined with Trump's policies to curb steel imports and boost the steel industry in the U.S., should drive Nucor's profits higher in 2025 and beyond. As its earnings grow, so should Nucor's dividends and share price.

A no-brainer dividend stock to buy now

Income investors are often wary of cyclical stocks, fearing that companies whose sales and earnings ebb and flow with commodity prices and economic cycles could fail to pay regular dividends. As a Nucor shareholder, you can put those fears to rest since this company has been very disciplined with capital allocation since inception. While maintaining a strong balance sheet and investing in growth, Nucor aims to return at least 40% of its net earnings to shareholders.

NUE data by YCharts.

So far, Nucor has increased its dividend for 52 straight years, and that has hugely contributed to its stock's returns. With reinvested dividends, Nucor stock has more than tripled investors' money in the past decade and generated a staggering 800% returns in 20 years. If you notice, the stock has surged since 2020 ever since Topalian took the helm.

Those massive returns are also a reminder for investors to look beyond dividend yields when buying dividend stocks. Nucor stock yields only 1.8%, but its dividend stability and growth easily make up for it as evidenced by the chart above, making it one of the best dividend stocks to buy on any dip.

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In what might go down as one of the wildest weeks for investors in stocks in recent history, Newmont (NYSE: NEM) stock offered much respite, with solid and steady gains through the week. Shortly after noon ET Friday, Newmont stock hit a weekly intraday high of 26%, according to data provided by S&P Global Market Intelligence. The S&P 500 (SNPINDEX: ^GSPC), meanwhile, managed to log 6.1% gains, at its intraday best over the past five trading days, through 2 p.m. ET Friday

Newmont stock is riding the wave of fresh enthusiasm in gold stocks amid the stock market turmoil, with one analyst even upgrading the stock's price target by 20%.

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This analyst expects gold prices to rise further

Newmont is the world's largest gold producer, with its mines churning out 6.8 million attributable ounces of gold in 2024. The mining giant also produces silver, copper, zinc, and lead.

As one may guess, Newmont's fortunes depend on commodity prices, and we are witnessing gold's golden days right now. Gold is on fire, with its price hitting a record high this morning and jumping over $3,220 per ounce. Analysts at UBS just predicted gold prices to hit $3,500 per ounce in 2026 as investors flock to the yellow metal amid the tariffs and trade war that have triggered fears of a recession.

At the same time, analyst Daniel Major lifted Newmont stock's rating to buy from neutral and upped its price target to $60 per share from $50 a share. That would mean a 20% upside from the gold stock's closing price of April 10. Major believes Newmont stock could get a lift as the miner achieves its 2025 guidance amid low expectations.

Other gold stocks, however, could rise faster

Newmont stock has hugely underperformed the industry and gold prices in recent years as operational challenges and high costs hit the miner's profits and cash flows. 2024, however, was a strong year for Newmont. Having acquired Newcrest in 2023, Newmont's sales jumped 57% in 2024, and it turned a net profit of $3.4 billion versus a net loss of nearly $2.5 billion in 2023.

Newmont is also cutting debt, and expects to raise net cash proceeds of around $2.5 billion from the sale of some assets this year. A UBS analyst believes the miner could return much of this cash to shareholders in the form of share buybacks.

I'm not too sure here, though. While soaring gold prices should send Newmont's sales up in 2025, I'm still wary about its mining and production costs and expect them to remain high this year. That means other, even smaller, gold stocks, might be able to better exploit gold prices to their advantage and grow faster than Newmont.

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After hitting a 52-week low of $16.32 per share on April 4, Symbotic (NASDAQ: SYM) stock bounced back and hit a weekly intraday high of 16.1% through 10:30 a.m. ET Friday, according to data provided by S&P Global Market Intelligence.

Turns out, investors lapped up the opportunity to buy shares in the artificial intelligence (AI) automation company amid the stock market rout.

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Why Symbotic stock crashed in recent months

Symbotic develops fully autonomous mobile robots controlled by AI-enabled software to automate warehouses, distribution centers, and supply chains.

Earlier this year, Symbotic acquired Walmart's advanced systems and robotics business and struck a deal with the retail giant to develop and deploy automation systems for 400 accelerated pickup and delivery centers at Walmart stores over the next few years.

Walmart paid $230 million at the deal's closing and will pay another $290 million to Symbotic. Symbotic believes the deal could add $5 billion to its backlog in the long term and open up a new market with an addressable size of over $300 billion in the U.S. alone.

Symbotic stock surged after the Walmart deal but gave up its gains soon after as its operational performance left investors asking for more.

Is this a golden opportunity to buy Symbotic stock?

After growing its revenue by 47% year over year in the fourth quarter, Symbotic reported only 35% revenue growth for its fiscal 2025 first quarter, ended Dec. 31, 2024. Its net loss remained steady, too, at $19 million, and it guided for only around 30% revenue growth for Q2.

However, with Symbotic stock hitting a 52-week low and still down a whopping 55% in one year as of this writing, smart investors saw an opportunity to buy the stock this week.

Symbotic's long-term relationship with Walmart, which dates back to 2015, and a backlog of $22.4 billion as of Sept. 30, 2024, makes it an intriguing AI and robotics play for the long term. There could be bumps along the way though, especially amid the ongoing tariffs and trade war that could disrupt supply chains, increase costs, and slow down business. Symbotic sources raw materials from across the world, including China, Germany, Italy, Sweden, and Mexico.

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The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy now… and Symbotic wasn’t one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years.

Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $496,779!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $659,306!*

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See the 10 stocks »

*Stock Advisor returns as of April 10, 2025

Neha Chamaria has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Symbotic and Walmart. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.