The fact that regional stocks have outperformed the Dow Jones Industrials and other broad market indexes may be small comfort to investors examining the charred remains of their portfolios. But it's the only solace they're going to get from a market where new shock waves reverberate every day.

The Post-Gazette/Bloomberg Index of 62 regional stocks has fallen 15 percent this year and 16 percent since June 30, 2007, shortly before the subprime mortgage crisis commenced. The double-digit dips are smaller than those posted by the Dow Jones Industrial average and the Standard & Poor's 500 over the same periods.

Yesterday's 504-point decline left the Dow off 18 percent for the year and 19 percent since the subprime crisis began in July 2007. The S&P 500 has fallen 19 percent this year and 21 percent since June 30, 2007.

Financial stocks have taken some of the worst pounding. National City Corp. has been the worst-performing member of the PG/Bloomberg index, falling 87 percent since the crisis began. It closed at $4.28 yesterday, off 54 cents.

The regional index's decline has been mitigated by the fact that shares of PNC Financial Services Group and some other regional financial institutions have weathered the crisis relatively unscathed. PNC did not have the credit exposure of Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch and American International Group, which were added to the body count yesterday.

"They're not sailing through, but they've not been buffeted nearly as bad as others," said Charlie Smith, chief investment officer of Fort Pitt Capital in Green Tree.

Financial stocks are missing from the list of the best 10 regional performers since the crisis began, but four of them are in the Top 10 so far this year: S&T Bancorp (up 22 percent); WesBanco (up 21 percent); First Commonwealth Financial (up 12 percent) and PNC (up 7 percent).

Small regional stocks dominate the list of top performers since the crisis began, paced by software developer Ansys (up 56 percent) and Calgon Carbon (up 53 percent).

Even local stocks that have performed well over the last 15 months have not been immune to the credit concerns that have made for a very volatile market, said Daniel Henderson, president of Cookson, Pierce & Co., Downtown.

"When you get this kind of liquidity and credit's not available, it doesn't matter what the stock is. It gets taken down," he said.

Mr. Henderson cited Consol Energy as an example. The Upper St. Clair coal producer is up 12 percent since mid-2007. But its shares have lost more than half of their value since June.

They fell another 12 percent yesterday, finishing at $51.63, down $7.03.

"The market is very oversold at this point," Mr. Henderson said. "The best thing to do in this kind of environment is to stick with your game plan."