If you're aiming to "buy low and sell high," then it makes infinite sense to start your search with bargain-priced stocks. Regularly reviewing a list of stocks trading near their 52-week lows can be a great first step.

Here, I'll try to do the initial legwork for you. So we won't be inundated with scores of disparate companies, I'll conduct my search by industry. This will allow us to make some initial comparisons among semi-related companies.

There are 24 industry groups as defined by the Global Industry Classification Standard (GICS). Energy is one of them. Here are the 10 largest by market cap that are hugging 52-week lows.

Company

Market Capitalization (in millions)

% Change From 52-Week Low

P/E Ratio (trailing)

ExxonMobil (NYSE: XOM) $337,485              18.5%              12.6
Petrobras (NYSE: PBR) $217,374              7.1%              11.3*
Total (NYSE: TOT) $123,349              10.9%              9.05
Eni SpA (NYSE: E) $82,448              14%              10.4
Statoil ASA (NYSE: STO) $69,802              9.6%              13.8
Occidental Petroleum (NYSE: OXY) $69,400              18.5%              17.3
Suncor Energy (NYSE: SU) $53,319              15.8%              24.4
Canadian Natural Resources $40,549              18.2%              15.5
Imperial Oil $33,064              4.9%              16.3
Devon Energy $29,954              17.5%              12.8

Source: Capital IQ, a division of Standard & Poor's. Data as of Oct. 18. *Author's calculation.

The biggest shock? BP isn't on this list. It's not exactly high-flying, but it's up more than 50% from its low.

I've written in the past that ExxonMobil is looking attractive. It's up a little recently, but not much. Remember that Exxon tends to pay shareholders back more than just its 2.7% dividend yield. Read about that here.

The rest of the list includes many foreign players, including Petrobras, which recently floated the largest share offering ever -- $70 billion. At least one observer wasn't happy about this. Mark Mobius of Templeton Asset Management said, "The entire Petrobras issue is an abomination and a terrible violation of shareholder rights."

As for Total, fellow Fool Alex Dumortier highlighted it back in May. Shares haven't moved much in the interim, so check out his analysis here.

Interested in reading more about these stocks? Add them to My Watchlist, and My Watchlist will find all of our Foolish analysis on them.