If you had walked into a Christmas cocktail party in late 2018 and said that stocks were going to have a record performance in the first half of 2019, a lot of people would’ve thought you were crazy. But, you also would’ve been right. We are now at the halfway mark of 2019, and the S&P 500 is up more than 17% year-to-date, marking the biggest year-to-date gain for the index through June since 1997, when stocks were up 21% year-to-date at this point in time.
In other words, the stock market is having its best year in over two decades.
As has been the theme of markets for the past decade, tech stocks are leading the 2019 rally. The Nasdaq-100 index is up more than 21% year-to-date, versus the 17% gain for the S&P 500. But, that 21% number doesn’t really do justice to the tech stocks which are truly leading the record 2019 rally.
Indeed, in that Nasdaq-100 index, there are eight stocks which are up more than 45% year-to-date. That means 8% of the Nasdaq-100 index has rallied more than 45% over the past six months.
That’s a big chunk making big gains. So which are those eight stocks, and will they keep rallying into the end of 2019? Let’s answer those questions and more by taking a deeper look at the market’s top tech stocks of 2019.