Other most-wanted wheels range from a relative economy car from Volvo, to the first luxury-brand hybrid from Lexus, to an all-wheel drive Audi, the carmaker s fastest to date.

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Yet their valuation scores relative to the market range from a high of just the 52nd percentile for Xilinx down to the 7th percentile for Applied Materials.

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"The fact that retail is out of favor is a theory that has been trumpeted across the Street for the last six months, and therefore has already been worked into the stock price, " says Bob Napoli, brokerage analyst at ABN Amro, pointing out that Merrill's shares are the most attractive relative to its historical trading range.

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The relative performance broke out of its trading range in November after bottoming earlier in the year.

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Banks started their intermediate moves last Wednesday as Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS) showed strong relative strength as it broke above recent range.

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Possible causes range from less competition to better deals available because of corporate Europe's relative inefficiency.

ECONOMIST: Pick carefully

He calculates a range of poverty rates by making different assumptions about the needs of married versus single parents and the relative cost of children.

ECONOMIST: The war over poverty | The

It pointed out that Microsoft, a relative newcomer to the tablet market, was making modest yet promising progress with its Surface range of tablets - 900, 000 units were shipped in the first quarter.

BBC: iPads on display

Instead, the relative shares in the deal were struck by reference to both banks' share-price trading range over the past year.

ECONOMIST: Banks in Spain