BusinessWeek Logo
Stocks: 20 Great Growth Names

Getty Images

Stocks: 20 Great Growth Names

By Ben Steverman

The last decade has been tough on equity investors: First, the tech bubble burst in 2001-2002. Then, just after the stock market again reached an all-time high in 2007, investors were overwhelmed by the biggest financial crisis of their lifetimes.

However, some companies have not just survived but have grown exponentially. BusinessWeek relied on data from Standard & Poor's Compustat to determine the top-performing stocks of the last ten years.

Our methodology: We screened for members of the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index with the highest total return to investors, including both price appreciation and dividend payments. Because especially volatile stocks can be hard on investors, we also looked at each stock's beta, which is a measure of the stock's volatility relative to the overall market, as represented by the S&P 500 index. (A beta above 1 means the stock is more volatile than the overall market, while a beta below 1 is less volatile.). Stocks with betas greater than 1.0 are more volatile than the overall market, so we left those off our list.

Click ahead for the past decade's 20 best stocks.

(Total return and beta measure from May 1, 1999 to May 1, 2009. Additional data from Capital IQ.)