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. To prevent us from being 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). Transportation is one of them.

Below are the top seven companies in this space (by market cap) that are hugging 52-week lows.

Company

Market Capitalization (in millions)

% Change from 52-week Low

P/E Ratio (trailing)

 

Copa Holdings (NYSE: CPA)

                       $2,083

                         19.5%

                         12.5

Landstar System (Nasdaq: LSTR)

                       $1,878

                         9.4%

                         23.1

Knight Transportation (NYSE: KNX)

                       $1,523

                         15.5%

                         26.5

Werner Enterprises (Nasdaq: WERN)

                       $1,513

                         15%

                         20.5

Heartland Express (Nasdaq: HTLD)

                       $1,357

                         13.2%

                         23.6

Nordic American Tanker Shipping (NYSE: NAT)

                       $1,256

                         1.7%

NM

Allegiant Travel (Nasdaq: ALGT)

                        $821

                         17.9%

                         13.0

Source: Capital IQ, a division of Standard & Poor's. Data as of Oct. 24.

One warning before we talk about a few of these companies. Some of these companies are near both their 52-week lows and their 52-week highs (e.g. Heartland). The screen still works as an idea generator, though.

All of the above companies aid in the transportation of goods or people by land, air, or sea. In the case of Copa Holdings, this means providing air service out of Panama. It does so with the lowest earnings multiple of the group.

Meanwhile, Allegiant and Landstar were both featured in our 11 O'Clock Stock series in which the Motley Fool invested its own money in 50 stocks. You can read the write-ups here and here.

One stock I've warned against in the past is Nordic American Tanker. Be wary of its 9% dividend yield. Read my thoughts from back in May 2009 here.

If you are interested in reading more about these stocks, add them to My Watchlist to find all of our Foolish analysis on them.