The Globe and Mail attempts to identify stocks that climb more in an advancing market than they fall in a declining market in its Wednesday, Oct. 22, edition. The Globe's Michael Bowman writes in the Number Cruncher column that he only looked at companies with a market capitalization greater than $1-billion. Mr. Bowman considered five-year bear and bull sensitivities of a stock's performance to the negative or positive changes in the benchmark, in this case the S&P/TSX composite index. Return on equity (ROE) measures a corporation's profitability by revealing how much profit a company generates with the money shareholders have invested. Companies had to have an ROE greater than 5 per cent to be included in Mr. Bowman's recommended list. Stocks that show upside in a volatile market are Empire, AltaGas, Baytex Energy, Peyto Exploration & Development, Jean Coutu Group, WestJet Airlines and Whitecap Resources. If a decline in the price of crude contributes to a dip in the S&P/TSX composite, it is comforting to know that Whitecap Resources outperformed the index in a falling market over the past five years, and gained more than the index in a rising market.