Anyone who held the so-called “magnificient seven” in 2023, i.e. the seven stocks that are hardly missing from any US investor portfolio, was on the winning side. The shares of Microsoft, Apple, Nvidia, Alphabet, Meta, Amazon and Tesla recorded huge price gains and clearly left well-known US indices such as Nasdaq, S&P 500 and Dow Jones behind. But although Apple and Microsoft shares rose between 40 and 50 percent over the year and Tesla even recorded a price increase of more than 100 percent, these companies are not on the list of stock market high-flyers USA. The top spot goes to chip manufacturer Nvidia, which has outshined the competition with a share price increase of around 250 percent since the beginning of the year.
The most important price driver for Nvidia, as with most tech stocks, is the boom in artificial intelligence and the increasing number of its applications. High-performance chips from Nvidia are the first choice for AI applications: The Santa Clara company has exceeded Wall Street’s earnings expectations with its results for four quarters in a row. Nivida boss Jensen Huang is working on To make industrial groups worldwide dependent on themselves
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The big question is whether Nvidia can maintain this high growth rate in 2024: Many investors are betting that competitor Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) will shorten the gap to the market leader and steal market share from Nvidia. There has already been advance praise on the stock market for this: With a price increase of 120 percent in 2023, AMD is in fourth place, leaving a company like Tesla behind.
Meta is in second place. The price increase of 180 percent is a sign of a brilliant race to catch up after some investors Facebookparent company had already written off in 2022. But Meta-CEO Mark Zuckerberg gave the company a breath of fresh air Metaverse narrative and billions invested in the future topic of virtual reality (VR) new life. Despite falling user numbers, the social media giant Facebook as well as Instagram and Whatsapp continue to provide the necessary cash flow. With the app Threads, Zuckerberg even launched an attack on X (formerly Twitter), which was led by Elon Musk had gone into a lurch.
The third place in the ranking does not come from the “magnificient seven” list and is the real surprise in the list of top stock performers. The cybersecurity company Palo Alto Networks recorded an increase of 124 percent this year, moving ahead of AMD into third place. Wall Street apparently trusts the California company to grow rapidly growing cybersecurity market
to become one of the decisive players.
As appealing as lists of the year’s top performers are, they’re always a look in the rearview mirror. However, money is made on the stock market by looking ahead: only those who are convinced that megatrends such as AI and cybersecurity will give the favorite stocks of 2023 further “momentum” in the coming year are likely to be loyal to the winners of the year that is coming to a close remain.
The others turn themselves in to change favorites – or they invest, boring but much safer and also lucrative in the long term, using an ETF in a complete index.