The city that gave birth to America has had a great year in the stock market and is the first stop in our CNBC Recovery Road Trip.
Philadelphia. The home of Independence Hall, cheesesteaks and the first art museum and zoo in America places third out of the best cities for the stock market over the past year.
Our Road Trip cities were found by creating 23 city indexes comprised of the biggest market cap companies, following them for a year — dumping the single best and worst stocks in the index and averaging the rest.
Philadelphia area companies posted an average return of 20 percent from October 31st, 2011 to the same date this year. (Read More: What Cities Have Been Best for the Market?)
The pack was led by the big dog in town, CNBC's parent company Comcast . It posted the best return of any Philly company over 52 weeks. But it's not just the big companies making a splash in the market.
Small and mid-cap companies such as Airgas, Crown Holdings, FMC Corp and UGI also had nice runs.
Nearly every stock in our "Philly Index" was higher year over year. Ben Franklin would be proud.
