🗞 The 5 Best & Worst Stocks of 2024

Happy Sunday!

Here’s what’s on the docket for this week’s newsletter:

• 📈 5 Best Performing Stocks of 2024

• 📉 5 Worst Performing Stocks of 2024

Let’s dive in!

Best Stocks of 2024

Here are the 5 best performing stocks of 2024:

*Note: To avoid the micro-caps turned small-caps, we’ve limited this list to companies that started the year with a market cap of $2 billion or greater. If you’re looking for the absolute best percentage returns, you can use the FinChat Screener and sort by YTD performance.

1.) AppLovin

AppLovin is a software-based platform for mobile app developers to enhance the marketing and monetization of their apps.

YTD Performance: +754%

2.) Rocket Lab

Rocket Lab is an end-to-end space company whose primary business is placing customers’ satellites into orbit.

YTD Performance: +410%

3.) MicroStrategy 

MicroStrategy started as an application software vendor but has essentially turned into a Bitcoin holding company. As the price of Bitcoin rose this year, MicroStrategy saw a massive rise in investor sentiment.

YTD Performance: +382%

4.) Palantir

Palantir provides data fusion platforms that help facilitate machine-assisted and human-driven data analysis. Palantir’s price-to-sales ratio started the year at 18x and finished the year at 68x.

YTD Performance: +373%

5.) Carvana

Carvana is the largest online used-car retailer in the United States. After nearly filing for bankruptcy less than 3 years ago, Carvana’s profitability has recovered and has now jumped more than 50-fold off of its lows.

YTD Performance: +339%

Worst Performing Stocks of 2024

*Note: Once again, to avoid small cap outliers, we’ve limited this list to companies with greater than a $1 billion market cap. If you’d like to see the complete list, we recommend using the FinChat Screener and sorting by worst YTD performance.

1.) QXO

QXO provides professional services, consulting, training, specialized programing and technical support. After announcing a private placement registration in June that indicated that the share count would jump significantly, the stock dropped by more than 80% in a day.

YTD Performance: -86%

2.) Wolfspeed

Wolfspeed is the world’s leading innovator and manufacturer of wide bandgap semiconductors, which help to conserve and utilize energy. Between a significant divestiture and a CEO departure, investors have soured on the semiconductor stock.

YTD Performance: -83%

3.) 10X Genomics

10X Genomics is a biotechnology company that designs and manufactures gene sequencing technology used in scientific research. During the 3rd quarter, the company missed sales estimates by a substantial margin and attributed the poor performance to an internal sales restructuring effort and cautious customer expenditures.

YTD Performance: -73%

4.) Viasat

Viasat provides high-speed satellite broadband services and secure networking systems to both military and commercial customers. Viasat had a number of disappointments during the year, but perhaps the largest was the glitch experienced on one of its biggest satellites that rendered it inoperable. This was an estimated $700 million investment from the company.

YTD Performance: -68%

5.) Hertz

Hertz is an American car rental company that operates its namesake brand Hertz, as well as Dollar Rent A Car, Firefly Car Rental and Thrifty Car Rental. Once a “meme stock” darling, Hertz’s massive investment in electric vehicles coming out of the pandemic proved to be poorly timed and as used car prices have dropped so has Hertz stock price.

YTD Performance: -64.2%

Meme of the week

For those working in finance, this is your friendly reminder that with modern financial terminals (cough, cough FinChat.io 😉) you can get access to powerful financial data and not spend $30,000 a year.