S&P 500 Eyes 9th Week Of Gains, Longest Streak In 2 Decades: Stocks Leading The Rally

At the closing bell in New York trading on Thursday, the S&P 500 Index finished at 4,783 points, coming within a mere 0.2 percentage points of the previous record closing high of 4,796 set on Jan. 3, 2022.

The S&P 500 Index, closely tracked by the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust SPY, is poised to conclude its ninth consecutive week of gains unless Friday sees a decline of more than 0.75%. This marks the longest weekly winning streak since January 2004.

The benchmark for the largest 500 U.S. corporations by market capitalization is now also just 0.4 percentage points away from its all-time peak of 4,818 points, reached on Jan. 4, 2022.

There is only one session remaining to attain this milestone before the year’s trading comes to a close.

For 2023 as a whole, the S&P 500 is up 25%, marking its third-best year in the last two decades, and sharply recovering from a 19.4% decline in 2022.

Chart: S&P 500 Eyes All-Time Highs, On Track For 9th Week Of Gains

Top 5 Stocks Driving The S&P 500’s Rally In 2023

The best-performing stock within the S&P 500 for 2023 has been NVIDIA Corp. NVDA, with an astounding 240% increase since the year’s outset. This marks Nvidia’s strongest year since 2001, when it soared by 310%.

Following closely is Meta Platform Inc. META with a 198% increase, nearly doubling its performance compared to its previous best year in 2013, when it surged by 105%.

In the third position is Crowdstrike Holdings Inc. CRWD with a 143% increase. The fourth spot goes to Advanced Micro Devices Inc. AMD, delivering a return of 130%. Rounding out the top five is Palo Alto Networks Inc. PANW with a notable 112% increase.

Name	Price Chg.%	Industry
NVIDIA Corporation	239.51%	Semiconductors and Semiconductor Equipment
Meta Platforms, Inc.	198.00%	Interactive Media and Services
CrowdStrike Holdings, Inc.	142.99%	Software
Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.	130.30%	Semiconductors and Semiconductor Equipment
Palo Alto Networks, Inc.	112.13%	Software

Top 5 Stocks Driving The S&P 500’s Q4 Rally

A significant portion of the S&P 500’s rally has occurred in the last quarter of the year.

Remarkably, it has risen by nearly 15% since late October, which amounts to an 11.6% increase for the quarter. This marks the fourth quarter of 2023 as the best in terms of performance since the fourth quarter of 2020, when the COVID-19 vaccine was first discovered.

The stocks propelling the performance of the S&P 500 in the fourth quarter of the year are as follows:

1. Crowdstrike Holdings Inc., up 53%
2. PDD Holdings Inc. PDD, up 48.6%
3. Advanced Micro Devices Inc. AMD, up 45%
4. ZScaler Inc. ZS, up 43%
5. Intel Corp. INTC, up 42%.

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Image created using artificial intelligence via MidJourney.