The bull market turned two years old over the weekend, so we wanted to take a quick moment to highlight some of the S&P 500’s biggest winners and losers over the last two years. Since the S&P 500’s closing low two years ago, 73 stocks in the S&P 500 have rallied at least 100% while just 71 are down. The table below lists the 19 stocks that have rallied at least 200%, and below that we list the 24 stocks that have declined at least 25%.AI has been a leading theme of the bull market, so most people already know that NVIDIA (NVDA) — with its ten-bagger — tops the list in terms of performance.Even the big gains in Super Micro (SMCI) and Vistra (VST) probably won’t surprise many people, but looking through the list, some names will likely be eye-openers. Take General Electric (GE).Wasn’t that an also-ran from the 1990s?After two decades in a ‘penance’ working off the financial engineering before 2000 and some questionable leadership and strategic decisions, GE has gotten a new lease after breaking up into three units.Its aerospace unit, which trades under the old ticker GE, has rallied more than 350% during this bull market, and even the two other spin-offs, GE Vernova (GEV), which consists of its electric power business, has doubled, while GE Healthcare (GEHC) is up 50%. Besides GE, other names that may come as a surprise to investors are Royal Caribbean (RCL), Axon Enterprises (AXON), Howmet Aerospace (HWM), and KKR.At the sector level, Technology leads the list with seven of the 19 names listed while Consumer Staples, Energy, Materials, Health Care, and Real Estate aren’t represented at all.
Of the 24 stocks that have declined at least 25%, seven come from the Consumer Staples sector, including Walgreens Boots Alliance (WBA) and Dollar General (DG), which are both down over 60%.Health Care is the second most represented sector with six stocks, while Materials is the only other one with more than two stocks on the list.Overall, eight sectors are represented, with Consumer Discretionary, Financials, and Real Estate being the only ones missing.Moderna (MRNA) and Pfizer (PFE) were two of the biggest winners during Covid as investors couldn’t get enough of the stocks given their exposure to the vaccine.Now that Covid is well in the rearview mirror and jabs of the treatment have slowed to a trickle relative to the rates of 2021, investors want little to do with these former market darlings.The lists of winners and losers during this bull market illustrate the importance of first-mover advantages.In the table above, streaming pioneer Netflix (NFLX) ranked 15th in performance with a gain of 227%.Contrast that to names like Paramount Global (PARA) and Warner Brothers Discovery (WBD) below.In 2021, these companies and others were convinced by NFLX’s streaming success that launching their own services would be a breeze.However, as the years have passed, the competitive nature of the streaming market has become apparent.There’s a limit to how many services consumers are willing or able to pay for.
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