Want to give a hat tip to TraderMark over at Fundmymutualfund.com for assembling this list. 2008 was a chaotic year, to say the least. And, with indexes down huge on the year, there weren't many rays of light in the abyss known as the 2008 stock market. The following though, is a list of some of best performing stocks for the year of 2008:
| Symbol | Company Name | % Price |
| EBS | Emergent BioSolutions Inc | 382.0 |
| SQNM | Sequenom Inc | 108.4 |
| VRX | Valeant Pharmaceuticals Int'l | 84.4 |
| ALO | Alpharma Inc | 77.9 |
| THOR | Thoratec Corp | 73.7 |
| RGLD | Royal Gold Inc | 59.9 |
| DLTR | Dollar Tree Inc | 59.2 |
| VPHM | ViroPharma Inc | 52.6 |
| ALGT | Allegiant Travel Co | 45.0 |
| CFFN | Capitol Federal Financial | 44.3 |
| GTIV | Gentiva Health Services Inc | 41.8 |
| RNT | Aaron Rents Inc | 41.0 |
| DSCP | Datascope Corp | 40.8 |
| FFIN | First Financial Bankshares Inc | 40.1 |
| CMP | Compass Minerals International Inc | 39.6 |
| MYGN | Myriad Genetics Inc | 39.4 |
| FBP | First BanCorp (Puerto Rico) | 38.6 |
| QSII | Quality Systems Inc | 38.2 |
| PNRA | Panera Bread Co | 37.7 |
| ORH | Odyssey Re Holdings Corp | 37.0 |
| SQM | Sociedad Quimica y Minera de Chile | 32.2 |
| FDO | Family Dollar Stores Inc | 30.7 |
| LG | Laclede Group Inc | 29.3 |
| UST | UST Inc | 27.5 |
| RKT | Rock-Tenn Co | 26.1 |
| CRK | Comstock Resources Inc | 25.1 |
| FNFG | First Niagara Financial Group Inc | 24.3 |
| VRTX | Vertex Pharmaceuticals Inc | 23.7 |
| HRB | H&R Block Inc | 23.1 |
| INT | World Fuel Services Corp | 23.0 |
| DNA | Genentech Inc | 22.5 |
| LMNX | Luminex Corp | 22.0 |
| AMGN | Amgen Inc | 21.1 |
| CWT | California Water Service Group | 20.8 |
| STBA | S&T Bancorp Inc | 19.7 |
| SF | Stifel Financial Corp | 18.8 |
| EMS | Emergency Medical Services Corp | 18.7 |
| OCR | Omnicare Inc | 17.8 |
| STRA | Strayer Education Inc | 17.8 |
| FNF | Fidelity National Financial Inc | 16.4 |
| EW | Edwards Lifesciences Corp | 16.1 |
| PNY | Piedmont Natural Gas Inc | 16.1 |
| MANT | ManTech International Corp | 16.1 |
| CBST | Cubist Pharmaceuticals Inc | 16.1 |
| UMBF | UMB Financial Corp | 16.0 |
| WMT | Wal-Mart Stores Inc | 15.9 |
| ROST | Ross Stores Inc | 15.7 |
| GOLD | Randgold Resources ADR | 15.6 |
| DCM | NTT DoComo Sponsored ADR | 15.4 |
| BNCL | Beneficial Mutual Bancorp Inc | 15.4 |
| NFS | Nationwide Financial Services Inc | 15.3 |
Definitely some surprises.
