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Pharma's Market

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Dec.29

9:13 AM ET

Monday, 29 Dec 2008

Are Merck's Dog Days Over?

Posted By:Mike Huckman

Topics:Stock Market | Corporate News | Pharmaceuticals

Sectors:Pharmaceuticals

Companies:Merck & Co Inc

CNBC.com
Here at CNBC we've got a team of folks who compile market stats and regularly send them out via blast emails. They slice and dice the stuff every which way, and while it's very helpful and insightful for a lot of our staffers, I confess I usually instantly delete the messages since much of it doesn't pertain to my beat.

But for some reason last Friday evening — maybe because I was bored on the train ride home and I don't pass the time playing "Brickbreaker" — I opened and paged down one of the stock-stat emails.

It came as no surprise that General Motors is the December dog of the Dow — down more than 30 percent so far this month.

But I was definitely caught off guard when I saw that Merck (Merck!) is the best performing Dow component in December, with less than three trading days left. MRK shares [MRK Loading... () ] are up eight-and-a-half percent.

Could the drugmaker's annual analyst meeting earlier this month have been a catalyst? Or did investors simply decide the stock's cheap with a high dividend yield?

Check back later today when I will reveal the best-performing Nasdaq 100 stock year-to-date. The index is down 42 percent in 2008. But the top stock is up nearly 27 percent. Hint: It's a biopharma stock.

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