S&P 500 Wins the Gold

Medal Rounds - Final: The Beijing Olympics have come and gone, and so does our World Markets Olympic Challenge. The USA's S&P 500 surged on its last day of the competition to solidly take the gold. See how the other indices finished here.

• The UK's FTSE 100 jumped over 2.5% on Friday to leap ahead of Australia and take the silver.
• Australia had a respectable 1.2% gain for the day to take the bronze, despite finishing the competition in negative territory.
• India's Sensex Index, the only BRIC index to make the finals, finished in last place, down 4.7% during the finals.
• The S&P 500 was the legitimate winner - Not only did it outperform the 9 other finalists, it outperformed all 20 of the original indices in the competition. By contrast, the Shanghai Index was the worst performer of the original 20, down 11.8% over the past two weeks.

World Markets Olympic Challenge: Leaderboard (Final) -

Here are the top performing stocks on the S&P over the past two weeks:

• Nvidia up 23.7% for the past two weeks
• MBIA up 19.0% for the past two weeks
• Southwestern Energy up 15.7% for the past two weeks
• Wendy's International up 15.4% for the past two weeks
• Devon Energy up 14.2% for the past two weeks

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