MW Nasdaq scores longest winning streak since 1992 as historic stock-market comeback continues

By Joseph Adinolfi and Christine Idzelis

Big Tech is back

The stock market's rebound continued to pick up speed Friday.

A rally that has already catapulted stocks higher with a velocity rarely seen before continued to pick up speed on Friday.

While the Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA led Friday's rally with a nearly 869-point jump, the technology-heavy Nasdaq Composite COMP and Nasdaq-100 NDX indexes have been among the biggest stars of the stock-market rebound this month. Small-cap equities RUT and the momentum factor - the latter represented by a popular iShares exchange-traded fund MTUM - have also performed well.

Until this latest break higher, the Nasdaq had traded largely sideways since October, as investors alternated between worrying that artificial intelligence would wreak havoc on software and professional-services companies and fears that the massive investment in AI infrastructure might not pay off.

See: Stocks usually take the escalator up and the elevator down. In this latest rebound, it is happening in reverse.

But on Friday, the technology-heavy Nasdaq Composite clinched a historic accomplishment: a 13th straight day in the green. That marked the index's longest winning streak since Jan. 9, 1992, according to Dow Jones Market Data. The Nasdaq also scored its biggest three-week percentage gain since April 24, 2020.

Back then, the information-technology sector XX:SP500.45 represented just 5.5% of the S&P 500, compared with 34.7% today, according to Dow Jones Market Data. But despite tech's recent struggles in the market, it has remained the largest sector in the S&P 500 SPX this year.

For tech bulls, this latest winning streak has coincided with a rapid comeback for longtime sector stalwarts, following a painful period that saw popular valuation metrics like forward price-to-earnings ratios fall to the lowest levels in years. The iShares Expanded Tech-Software Sector ETF IGV soared almost 14% this week, as hard-hit software stocks rebounded after a difficult stretch.

Big Tech has roared back in April after "that area got significantly oversold," said Dave Mazza, CEO of Roundhill Investments, during an interview with MarketWatch.

However, even as software struggled, many semiconductor names - particularly in the red-hot memory space - continued to power higher. This contributed mightily to the performance of the momentum factor.

"Software is probably the bargain; semiconductors are the momentum," said Stephanie Link, chief investment strategist and a portfolio manager at Hightower Advisors, in a phone interview.

Back in the saddle

For the first time since last fall, the group of elite megacap stocks known as the "Magnificent Seven" were back in the spotlight. Some of these Big Tech stocks had been hit pretty hard in 2026, with the selling starting well before the Iran conflict.

But data show that recently investors have been warming toward these stocks once again. Data from Vanda Research has shown retail investors flocking back to some of their longtime favorite names from the group, like Tesla $(TSLA)$. Interest in tech names continued late into the week; investors on Thursday poured about $3 billion into the Invesco QQQ Trust Series I QQQ, an ETF that tracks the Nasdaq-100 index. That marked the ETF's largest daily inflow since attracting $3.1 billion on Dec. 19, FactSet data showed.

Over the last eight trading days, the Magnificent Seven stocks have seen their collective market value increase by $2.51 trillion, the group's largest gain over an eight-day period on record, according to Dow Jones Market Data. The group - which includes Meta Platforms (META), Microsoft $(MSFT)$, Nvidia (NVDA), Alphabet $(GOOGL)$ $(GOOG)$, Amazon.com (AMZN), Apple $(AAPL)$ and Tesla - ended Friday with a combined market capitalization of $22.06 trillion.

The Roundhill Magnificent Seven ETF MAGS, which weights all seven of these Big Tech stocks equally, had been seeing net outflows this year until the start of this month, according to Mazza, a portfolio manager behind the fund. Yet those flows "flipped positive on the year on April 1," he noted, and inflows have picked up in April.

The U.S. stock market closed sharply higher Friday, with the S&P 500 SPX and Nasdaq Composite booking their best weeks since May, according to Dow Jones Market Data. The Dow saw its biggest weekly gain since June.

-Joseph Adinolfi -Christine Idzelis

This content was created by MarketWatch, which is operated by Dow Jones & Co. MarketWatch is published independently from Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

April 17, 2026 17:32 ET (21:32 GMT)

Copyright (c) 2026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.