When The Sopranos first aired 25 years ago, critics showered it with praise, describing it as groundbreaking and a masterpiece. The hit series about an organized crime family in New Jersey has managed to stand out over time.
Which stocks in the
S&P 500
have done the same? The analysts at Bespoke Investment Group decided to find out.
“Just for kicks, we were curious to see which current members of the S&P 500 have been the best-performing stocks since the first episode of ‘The Sopranos’ on Jan. 10, 1999,” the firm said in a note Thursday.
The 25 top performers all have spectacular gains on a price basis. It is highly unlikely, though, that the biggest winners of the past 25 years will stay on top for another quarter-century.
Take top-ranked
Monster Beverage,
with a gain of 108,919%.
“It started as a very small company 25 years ago and, to have that kind of meteoric rise again, it would take it to a market cap of who knows—multiple trillions,” Paul Hickey, co-founder of Bespoke Investment Group, told Barron’s. “As these companies get larger, it’s harder to sustain those growth rates.”
The Corona, Calif.-based Monster was a 2023 Barron’s stock pick. “Past returns are no guarantee of future ones, but in the case of energy-drink maker Monster Beverage, they very well could be,” we wrote back in August.
Hickey said that a lot of surprising names made the top 25. “There’s a lot of tech stocks on the list, but there’s a lot of non-tech stocks on the list, too,” he said. “It highlights that while secular tailwinds can really help propel a stock moving forward, you don’t necessarily have to have those. Individual company-specific stories can also play a role, whether it’s management or strategy and how they have grown and taken market share.”
One example is
AutoZone,
the car parts retailer. “It isn’t a very sexy industry but the company has been constantly buying back stock over the years,” Hickey said. “So, even though the company itself hasn’t been a hypergrowth company, by employing the strategy of buying back stock with their cash flow over the years, they have really shrunk their share float to become one of these top performers.”
Apple,
a tech household name, is on the list. “With a gain of over 46,000%, Apple has been the second-best performing stock—and probably the most expected name—in the index, but its gain has been less than half of Monster Beverage’s rally of over 108,000%,” wrote Bespoke.
Apple is currently the most-valuable listed U.S. company, although Microsoft briefly passed the maker of iPhones on Thursday. Apple and
Microsoft
are the only two U.S. companies that have held the position of largest in terms of market cap since February 2019.
At No. 3 is
Old Dominion Freight Line.
The trucking stock has gained more than 40,000%, according to Bespoke’s data.
Rounding out the winner’s circle for the Top Five of the 25 are home builder
NVR
with a 16,000% price gain, and
Copart,
the world’s largest auctioneer of salvaged vehicles, with a gain of nearly 15,800%.
In November, Barron’s recommended Copart as a stock pick, saying “its stock looks like a gem.”
Honorable mention goes to
Tractor Supply,
at No. 6 with a gain of 15,083%. Last March, Barron’s cautioned that after the retailer’s “meteoric rise,” investors who overlook more rural-themed retailers do so “at their own risk.” The stock is up 3% so far this year after falling 4% in 2023.
Bespoke said it was worth noting that 25 stocks in the index are down since the first episode of The Sopranos, including the insurer
American International Group,
Ford, and
Citigroup.
Carnival Cruise made the list of losers even though the stock rose 130% in 2023, its best year on record.
The list of companies that weren’t among the standouts is interesting as well.
Megacap stocks such as Meta Platforms, Alphabet, and
Netflix
weren’t public yet, so they weren’t in the running.
Amazon.com
and Microsoft were, but with respective gains of “only” 3,700% and 920%, they didn’t make the list, Bespoke said.
Nvidia’s
initial public offering wasn’t until 12 days after the show premiered.
The takeaway for investors looking for the biggest winners a quarter-century from now is that no one knows who the standouts will be. “It’s like a Whitman sampler,” Hickey said. “You never know what you’re going to get in a box.”
That’s a reference to one of Tony Soprano’s most memorable tough-guy quotes: “Oh, poor baby. What do you want, a Whitman’s Sampler?”
Write to Lauren Foster at [email protected]
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