As we said in today’s Morning Lineup, IBM (IBM) is giving the market a blast from the past today as shares surged in reaction to earnings. As of this writing, IBM is trading at an all-time high thanks to an impressive 12.76% gain versus yesterday’s close. That is not only the single best performance of any S&P 500 component today, but the 12%+ gain is on pace to be the third largest daily gain in IBM’s long history dating back almost 60 years! The only two other days in the stock’s history that have seen it rise by more were back in July 1996 and April 1999; both of which were also positive reactions to earnings.
IBM has fallen out of its Tech leadership role over the years. 25 years ago it ranked as the seventh largest stock in the S&P 500, but today it is only the 40th largest.  However, IBM isn’t the only leader of the past having come back with a vengeance.  In the tables below, we show the seven stocks that were the largest in the S&P 500 25 years ago along with the largest currently (i.e. the Magnificent Seven).  Those former megacaps accounted for a significant 20.25% of the S&P 500’s market cap back then, but today’s cohort is even more dominant accounting for over 32%.

As for year-to-date performance in 2025, we would note that the past leaders have been outperforming the current leaders.  The seven largest stocks from 2000 have risen an average of 6.6% in 2025. That includes the 17%+ gain in IBM, a 20%+ gain in General Electric (GE), and a high single-digit percentage gain in Walmart (WMT).  Regaridng General Electric, the company today is a much different entity than the conglomerate from 25 years ago.  With that said, even looking at GE’s spin-off companies (not shown below) like GE Health Care (GEHC) and GE Veranova (GEV) returns have been respectable, each gaining well over 14% year to date.

Again, the current leaders of the S&P 500 account for a much larger share of market cap and hence have a much greater impact on the index’s performance.  But that is the weaker group of stocks so far this year. On average, those seven names are up only 0.74% YTD (median: 1.93% decline). Four of the seven are down on the year including an almost 12% drop in NVIDIA (NVDA).More By This Author:New York Home Prices On Top
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