S&P 500's highest-priced stock has a reputation to uphold

NVR Inc.’s ascension to the S&P 500 Index brought the homebuilder into a winning group: companies with the index’s highest price tags per share. An equally weighted gauge of the top 10 companies at the end of last year had a bigger year-to-date gain than the S&P 500 through Wednesday, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The high-priced stocks climbed 27% as a group, leading the S&P 500 by 4.3 percentage points. NVR became the most expensive stock in September, when it was moved from the S&P MidCap 400 Index, and closed Wednesday at $3,515.