Alta Fox have done a massive analysis of all the best performing stocks over the last five years.
Overall – they find that financially healthy companies with advantageous business positioning tend to do better.
Acquisitions are a feature of these top performing stocks (perhaps because of the five year time frame).
The analysis is a bit too micro cap focussed and only concentrates on Australia, Europe and North America and excludes some sectors (e.g. materials), but is nonetheless useful.
