The St. Cloud Stock Price Index continued its increase after the decline of the first three months of the year. Off a low of 1,326 reached on April 8 (after the initial announcement of broad new tariffs), the index rose to a new high on November 28 of 1,843.

The overall index hides two important trends within the nine stocks that comprise it. The total basket rose 14% (placing equal weights on each stock) but excluding two powerful, global champions — Essilor Luxottica (who own Precision Optics, DBL, Custom Eyes and Epic) and Quanta Systems (Blattner) — leave the index with a much smaller gain of 6% over the last 12 months. These narrower gains in what we would call the local, cyclical core of the stock index…