And the winner is: banking?

Analysis |

Although the damage from Wall Street's 2008 crash was virtually inescapable for anyone owning stocks, some companies, albeit very few, made it through with gains.

Perhaps the most surprising winners come in an unlikely industry: banking.

The Standard & Poor's 600 small-cap index had 79 companies that rose over the course of the year, accounting for 13 percent of the index. Among them were 13 regional banks.

Howard Silverblatt, senior index analyst with S&P, says the gains in the small-cap banks were one of the only real positive trends. Why? "They stayed local."

They didn't have the large holdings tied to subprime loans or other risky credit-market bets that sank bigger banks.

Also, because of their size, they aren't widely held, so that many escaped the damage caused by hedge funds and mutual funds forced to unload assets including banking stocks.

Virginia-based United Bankshares, for instance, was able to thrive by expanding into growth markets while still keeping a conservative balance sheet and maintaining a low percentage of bad loans, according to Morningstar's Jaime Peters.

The same was true for Indiana's Old National Bancorp, which wrote down relatively few bad loans while it opened new branches.

Among Northwest companies, there were only four gainers for 2008, and two were small banking companies: Eugene, Ore.-based Pacific Continental and Nampa, Idaho-based Home Federal Bancorp. (The other two gainers were Alaska Air Group and Northwest Pipe.)

To be sure, 79 winners out of the S&P 600 small-cap index is pretty dismal, but when compared with large-cap indexes, the performance of the small caps looks relatively healthy.

The 30 Dow Jones industrials yielded only two winners: McDonald's and Wal-Mart. Those weren't too surprising, considering consumers' newfound frugality. But even McDonald's was up just about 5 percent.

The S&P 500 fared even worse on a percentage basis, with only 15 stocks, or 3 percent, showing annual gains. Thrifty shoppers helped Family Dollar, up 36 percent, take the top spot.

Other standouts include Altria acquisition target UST, up 27 percent, and Amgen, which gained on hopes for its osteoporosis drug.

The tech-focused Nasdaq 100 did a tad better with seven stocks gaining on the year.