Key Points
Approximately 18% of S&P 500 stocks increased by at least 10% for the year, surpassing the five-year average of 9.4% for such moves.
Technology, financial, and metals mining sectors show numerous stocks up 50% or more in the past year, contributing over $4 trillion to market capitalization.
Gold mining stocks, including Newmont and Barrick Mining, have more than doubled due to a 66% rise in gold prices, driven by central banks shifting away from the U.S. dollar.
A lot of stocks have gone almost straight up. The reason is simple: the world is changing fast.
It feels like every day someone says, “Did you see that stock? It’s gone straight up.” They’re not wrong. Roughly 18% of S&P 500 stocks were up at least 10% for the year as of Friday morning, versus an average of just 9.4% of the index’s names making such a move through January 16 in the past five years, according to Dow Jones market data.
This continues an ongoing trend. We counted dozens of stocks — mostly within the technology, financial, and metals mining sectors, that are up 50% or more in the past year. Now, this group of surging shares accounts for over $4 trillion of market capitalization. Many of their charts look like parabolic moves—almost straight lines higher.
The latest examples are Micron Technology, Western Digital, and SanDisk, all benefitting from insatiable memory demand from companies—such as Nvidia —that are making artificial intelligence chips. Those memory stocks are up more than 200% in the past year. Micron was up more than 5% Friday.
For tech more broadly, demand is rising as companies adopt AI agents in their software to boost efficiency and cut costs. That’s driving semiconductor demand through the roof because data centers need massive compute to train AI models. A few years ago, chip makers Nvidia, Advanced Micro Devices, and Broadcom had their moments. Now the memory players are in the spotlight.
Even other AI-related names have had their moment in the sun. Amphenol, for instance, makes small connectors, and is seeing a growing portion of its sales come from data centers. The stock has more than doubled in the past year. Corning —an $80 billion maker of glass and other materials—has climbed 88% over the same period on rising demand from companies building out capacity.
The AI trend is powering copper mining stocks. The price of copper is up 30% in the past year, partly because of a brightening global economic outlook, but also because of rising copper demand from data centers.
The gain in the commodities’ price has brought stock in mining giants higher. Southern Copper stock is up 91% in the past year because miners’ expected sales move up similarly to the price of copper, but the profit expectations rise even faster because miners have many fixed costs (those that don’t change much), so higher sales means larger profit margins.
Even gold mining stocks are surging, though not because of AI. Giants Newmont and Barrick Mining have both more than doubled in the past year, with the price of gold up 66%.
Driving gold is a seismic shift in global politics. The Trump administration’s tariff agenda, reignited in April of 2025, caused the U.S. dollar to drop harshly against a basket of major currencies at that time, on momentary fears about the U.S. economy. The greenback is still near those April levels as central banks veer away from dollars for their reserves—and move more into gold.
Central banks are concerned about the future of the dollar, especially with other changes, such as the U.S. freezing hundreds of billions of dollar assets held at the Central Bank of the Russian Federation. Now, gold has become more of a go-to safe asset, benefiting the miners.
Elsewhere, U.S. investment banks have seen massive rallies. Citigroup and Goldman Sachs Group are both up just over 50% in the past year. One component of the gains is that the market expects continued profit growth as the Federal Reserve reduces interest rates, which drives banks’ funding costs lower, creates more demand for lending, and more demand for fee-based services for mergers and acquisitions.
The part that’s helping bring these stocks to the heights they’re at, though, is deregulation. This includes loosening requirements for the amount of cash banks must hold in reserves—freeing up more money for lending or M&A. It also includes an expedited process for the Federal Trade Commission and Department of Justice to review deals before closing, which lowers companies’ deal-related costs and gives them greater certainty about closing deals.
The point: AI is reshaping the business world, and the Trump administration is reshaping the policy landscape. Both forces are now embedded in stock prices—and investors have to factor them in.