How to find trailing 5-year stock returns for 1980s?

Question

I am trying to find the top gaining stocks in the 1980s based on the trailing 5-year return.

For example, I want to know the top performing stock for 1975-1980, 1976-1981, 1977-1982, etc. I don't have access to any advanced tools or financial software, nor is it practical to dig through every individual stock for those periods on Yahoo or Google finance.

Any thoughts on how I can shortcut this? I don't mind putting a little work into it, I'm trying trying to get some directions. I've search all over but could not find any clear solutions.

Answer 1

I dont know if this data is available for the 1980s, but this response to an old question of mine discusses how you can pull stock related information from google or yahoo finance over a certain period of time. You could do this in excel or google spreadsheet and see if you could get the data you're looking for. Quote from old post:

Google Docs spreadsheets have a function for filling in stock and fund prices.

You can use that data to graph (fund1 / fund2) over some time period.