Stock, industry rankings give regions bragging rights

It's a multicentury tradition in the USA: States are always looking for ways to prove they're better than each other.

Some take pride in the darnedest things, ranging from being home of the "largest ball of twine" (Kansas) to having the world's largest baseball bat (Kentucky). Then there's the whole "red" vs. "blue" thing.

USA TODAY tries to put the controversy to rest by ranking states by something that actually matters: stock price performance. By using the Bloomberg News regional stock indexes, USA TODAY ranked states by the performance of companies that are either based there or have significant operations in that state.

States were ranked on their stocks' performances in 2003 through 2004 as well as from 1994 through 2004, to compare short-term trends with longer-term ones, and to illustrate how they did in both bull and bear markets.

Some of the results might be surprising. Consider that despite the cataclysmic meltdown of technology stocks that started in 2000, Silicon Valley was still home of the best-performing stocks between 1994 and 2004. Perhaps more surprising is that Indiana was a close No. 2, behind by just 0.1 percentage point.

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