Even in a global pandemic and a down market, the 20 best-performing large-cap stocks of 2020 have all doubled. Here are their names.
Remember six months ago? We were ringing in a new year, and a new decade, with U.S. unemployment at 50-year lows, consumer confidence on the rise and stocks entering Year 11 of a bull market. Wow, does that feel like a totally different time – more like six years ago. And yet, there are plenty of glimmers of hope despite coronavirus still running rampant and unemployment hanging at Great Depression levels. The 20 best-performing large-cap stocks through the first half of 2020 are among those glimmers.
Each of the following large-cap stocks has already doubled (or more) through the first six months of 2020—at a time when, despite a solid three-month rally off the lows, the S&P 500 is still down roughly 5% on the year because of the historic market crash of late February and most of March.
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Here they are, in descending order of their year-to-date returns:
The 20 Best-Performing Large-Cap Stocks of 2020 (So Far)
Nikola (NKLA): 528%
Zoom Video (ZM): 273%
Moderna (MRNA): 221%
DraftKings (DKNG): 212%
GSX Techedu (GSX): 179%
Sea Limited (SE): 174%
Bilibili (BILI): 151%
Tesla (TSLA): 146%
Pinduoduo (PDD): 138%
Etsy (ETSY): 137%
Shopify (SHOP): 135%
DocuSign (DOCU): 132%
Zscaler (ZS): 131%
Teladoc (TDOC): 128%
Datadog (DDOG): 124%
Wayfair (W): 121%
Twilio (TWLO): 117%
Cloudflare (NET): 109%
Wix.com (WIX): 106%
Peloton (PTON): 104%
A few things to note here. DraftKings and Nikola are recent IPOs, having both come public this year (in April and June, respectively). That makes their 2020 returns even more impressive, though likely more fleeting, given that red-hot IPOs tend to eventually cool off, and that lockup expirations (when insiders can unload some shares) haven’t passed for either newly-public company.
Also, not all of these high risers are U.S. companies; six of them are based outside of our borders. Wix.com may be the least familiar to you; it’s a $13.2 billion Isreali website builder that came public in 2013, but didn’t really start to gain traction with investors until the second half of 2016. COVID-19 has done little to damage Wix.com’s cloud-based web development services, and the stock now has Wall Street’s full attention.
You probably know why shares of Zoom Video and Moderna have exploded this year. Both were relatively obscure companies four months ago; now they’re household names.
Tesla is the biggest name of the group, and its 2020 performance is simply an extension of what has been a yearlong tear for shares of the electric-car maker. The momentum in Tesla stock is so massive, in fact, that it has likely dragged shares of Nikola (a potential rival electric-car company named after the same person, Nikola Tesla) along with it. That’s no surprise—in the coronavirus era, the ability to bypass car dealerships all together has never seemed like such a brilliant idea.
And then there’s Peloton, which came public last September. It’s the company that has revolutionized the stationary bike, equipping theirs with screens that allow users to join live and recorded fitness classes and virtually cycle various terrains and cities from their own home. While the Peloton IPO had a rocky start, PTON has gotten its act together, with sales soaring in each of its first three quarters as a public company.
One more important thing to note about this list of the best-performing large-cap stocks of 2020 thus far: 18 of the 20 that made the list are either current or very recent recommendations by one (or more) of our Cabot advisories. Zoom Video, for instance, was recommended to our Cabot Top Ten Trader subscribers back in February, before the virus had really spread in the U.S., sending the entire country into lockdown. Tesla has been in our Cabot Stock of the Week portfolio since 2011. Current return? 3,249%!
And Carl Delfeld, chief analyst of our Cabot Global Stocks Explorer advisory, was on Sea Limited—a Singapore-based e-commerce and online gaming company that dominates in Southeast Asia—early, recommending it to his subscribers back in February 2019. Those who took his advice then are sitting on a 583% return now.
I can’t give away our other winners that made this list. To learn their names, you can subscribe to any of our 15 investment advisories by clicking here. If you’re looking specifically for the hottest growth stocks on the market, like the ones I just described, I’d recommending going with Cabot Top Ten Trader, where every Monday chief analyst Mike Cintolo gives you 10 of the best momentum stocks on the market, complete with buy ranges and loss limits.
To learn more, click here.
Regardless of whether you want to become a Cabot subscriber or not, this list of the 20 best-performing large-cap stocks of 2020 is a good place to start. Even in an extremely uncertain market and world like the current one, trends tend to last longer on Wall Street than most people expect. If you own one of the 20 fast-growing stocks mentioned above, that’s a good thing.
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