We recently published a list of the 11 Worst Performing Stocks in S&P 500 So Far in 2025. In this article, we will take a look at where Zebra Technologies Corporation (NASDAQ:ZBRA) stands against other worst performing stocks this year.

After a two-year surge of 53%, marking the best performance for the broad market index since the 1997-98 rally, stocks have been taken for a wild ride in 2025 due to uncertainties around recent tariffs, resulting in a year-to-date decline of nearly 6%.

READ ALSO: 11 Most Promising Stocks According to Analysts and 15 Best Dividend Stocks to Buy for Long-Term Passive Income.

Trends over the past century have shown that sustained high returns are uncommon. Following the strong back-to-back performance in the 1920s, markets fell sharply in 1929, which marked the beginning of the Great Depression. Then, after recovering in 1935 and 1936, it took a giant step back again a year later.

A recent report by a leading investment banking company also pointed out how, historically, bull markets produce mediocre returns in the third year. Although they are usually not negative. The New York-based firm has projected positive but muted returns for 2025, while also noting that the continued adoption of artificial intelligence has the potential to lead to a productivity boom and a stronger market rally.

The broad market index ended 0.74% higher on April 24, gaining 4.6% for the week, driven by a rebound in tech shares. The US Dollar also had its first weekly rise since March, as investors looked for signs that the ongoing trade war may be easing.

Washington also appears to have softened its stance on trade relations with Beijing. In an interview with Time magazine on April 22, Trump stated his administration was engaged with China on striking a tariff deal. The US president also expects announcements on many other trade deals to be made over the next three to four weeks.

While talking to CNBC, Jay Hatfield, founder and chief investment officer of InfraCap, expressed optimism that the worst of the uncertainty around tariffs is over:

“The confusion about whether there’s really talks going on with China or not took some steam out of the market. Our view is that we’ve reached peak tariff tantrum and so it’s likely to be more positive than negative.”

Chip Rewey, CIO of Rewey Asset Management, said the following on the situation by Reuters:

“This week you’ve seen kind of relief that maybe some of the worst case of the Trump tariff actions won’t come true. While we’ve recovered from some of the lows, we haven’t pushed back to highs. And I think somewhere in that range is where we’ll stay for a while.”

With that said, let’s now head over to discuss the worst performing stocks this year.

A tech-savvy employee testing a real-time location system in a warehouse.

Methodology

For this article, we went through screeners to identify stocks listed on the S&P index. From there, we picked the top 11 stocks with the worst year-to-date negative returns in share price, as of the close of business on Friday, April 25, 2025.

Why are we interested in the stocks that hedge funds pile into? The reason is simple: our research has shown that we can outperform the market by imitating the top stock picks of the best hedge funds. Our quarterly newsletter’s strategy selects 14 small-cap and large-cap stocks every quarter and has returned 373.4% since May 2014, beating its benchmark by 218 percentage points (see more details here).

Zebra Technologies Corporation (NASDAQ:ZBRA)

YTD Decline in Share Price: -35.83%

Zebra Technologies Corporation (NASDAQ:ZBRA) provides solutions to help businesses drive growth through increased asset visibility, intelligent automation, and connected frontline workers. The company’s customers include nearly four-fifths of the Fortune 500. With a year-to-date decline of approximately 36%, it is among the worst performing stocks this year.

Zebra Technologies Corporation (NASDAQ:ZBRA) has been grappling with challenges associated with rising costs and expenses, high debt levels, and foreign exchange woes over the last few months. Cost of sales increased 22.3% year-over-year in Q4 2024 due to high raw material costs, while it ended the quarter with a debt of $2,183 million.

On April 8, Truist Securities lowered Zebra Technologies Corporation (NASDAQ:ZBRA)’s price target to $254 from $379, while maintaining its Hold rating for the stock. Later in the month, Citigroup maintained its Neutral rating, but revised the stock’s price target from $371 to $250.

However, Zebra Technologies Corporation (NASDAQ:ZBRA) declared encouraging financial results for the first quarter of fiscal 2025 this week, which were above the high end of the company’s outlook. It reported net sales of $1,308 million, increasing 11.3% year-over-year. Net income stood at $136 million, or $2.62 per diluted share, improving from $115 million, or $2.23 per diluted share, last year.

While the improved financial performance is likely to boost investor confidence, the barcode scanner maker has projected lower-than-anticipated profit for Q2, due to a tariff impact of approximately $25 million to $30 million.

Overall, ZBRA ranks 4th among the 11 Worst Performing Stocks in S&P 500 So Far in 2025. While we acknowledge the potential of ZBRA, our conviction lies in the belief that AI stocks hold greater promise for delivering higher returns, and doing so within a shorter time frame. There is an AI stock that went up since the beginning of 2025, while popular AI stocks lost around 25%. If you are looking for an AI stock that is more promising than ZBRA but that trades at less than 5 times its earnings, check out our report about this cheapest AI stock.

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Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.