The Best And Worst Performing Stocks So Far In 2023

Wall Street stocks are back on their feet this year, recouping much of the ground lost to rising interest rates in 2022. The aggressive monetary-policy tightening by the Federal Reserve spilled into 2023, but in all likelihood the anti-inflation campaign is closer to the end than the beginning.

The S&P 500 is up 15% for this year through the end of last week, clawing its way back from a 19% slide for all of 2022 as rising yields on savings accounts and short-term bonds pulled cash out of equities. Excitement–and maybe more than a little hype–over the possibilities for artificial intelligence (AI) kindling an efficiency boom, gave a lift to tech stocks with exposure to the sector, while still-rising rising interest rates put regional banks among the biggest losers.

To get a clear view of winners and losers, we calculated the stocks with the best and worst returns among the large-capitalization stocks in the S&P 500 this year through June 16.

Best Performers Led by Tech

Atop the pack is Silicon Valley chipmaker Nvidia. With a whopping year-to-date return of 192%, the software company recently joined the elite list of companies with equity values of $1 trillion or more. The company trails only Apple
AAPL
($2.9 trillion), Microsoft
MSFT
($2.6 trillion), Saudi Aramco ($2.1 trillion), Google’s
GOOG
parent company Alphabet ($1.6 trillion) and Amazon
AMZN
($1.3 trillion).

Nvidia is benefiting from the surge in global demand for generative, or content-creating, AI and accelerated computing as large corporations seek to incorporate the technology into their businesses.

Nvidia’s first-quarter revenue of $7.2 billion surpassed research analysts’ expectations, largely driven by a 14% growth in sales at the company’s data center division. Versions of Nvidia’s graphic processing units (GPU) originally made for video games can help computers to learn without programmers, making the chips crucial for cloud and internet companies looking to train and deploy generative AI.

Nvidia forecast this quarter’s revenue would grow to around $11 billion, up from $6.7 billion a year earlier, and ratcheting up investor expectations for more gains to come. The No. 2 gainer this year is Meta, owner of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. The shares have returned 134% on the back of Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg’s resolve to cut operating costs, a bounceback from 2022’s full-year 64% decline, and its investment in AI

Approximately 21,000 employees have been laid off at Meta in multiple rounds of job cuts that commenced in November. More recently, the Silicon Valley giant unveiled its own generative AI technology, empowering users to develop their own chatbots and potentially positioning Meta’s as a competitor to tech behemoths Microsoft and Google in the emerging field.

Here are the five best-performing stocks in the S&P 500 through June 16:

1. Nvidia, 192%
2. Meta, 134%
3. Tesla
   TSLA
   , 112%
4. Advanced Micro Devices
   AMD
   , 96%
5. Carnival, 93%

Worst Performers Paced by Dish

Dish Network was the worst performer, extending a market slide of 57% in 2022, the company’s worst year since the global financial crisis. It has lost an additional 54% this year.

This year, a shrinking operating margin, cyberattacks on IT infrastructure, a high debt load and increased competition in the video streaming industry have weighed down the stock.

Dish Network, the second-largest satellite TV provider in the U.S., is losing subscribers, which is putting pressure on its profit margin. The subscriber base contracted in the first quarter after a February cyberattack on IT systems disrupted its services and caused a shareholder to file a class-action lawsuit challenging the system failure.

In 2022, the company had $16.7 billion in revenue, down from $17.9 billion in the preceding year thanks to weaker sales in the wireless and TV segments of the business. Its operating margin fell to 12%, down from the previous year’s level of 18%. Net income slid to $2 billion from $3.2 billion. In Q1, operating margin narrowed to 8.2% as sales fell to $3.96 billion from $4.33 billion a year earlier.

Advance Auto Parts
AAP
, down 53%, is a close second among the laggards. Most of this drop came after a first-quarter earnings miss, as well as outlook and dividend reductions that prompted Wall Street analysts to downgrade the company.

Three regional banks–Zions Bancorp
ZION
, KeyCorp
KEY
and Comerica
CMA
–rounded out the worst performers list. Following Silicon Valley Bank’s collapse, concerns have risen about unrealized balance sheet losses.

The three lenders saw deposit declines in the first quarter, compared with the same period last year. Zions Bancorp’s average deposit was down 15% to $70.2 billion, KeyCorp fell by 5% to $143.4 billion while Comerica dropped 17% to $64.7 billion.

Here are this year’s five worst-performing stocks in the S&P 500 through June 16, 2023:

1. Dish Network, -54%

2. Advance Auto Parts, -53%

3. Zions Bancorp, -43%

4. KeyCorp, -42%

5. Comerica, -37%