A familiar face in 2024 captured the title of best-performing Club stock of the year, and most of its top-performing peers also call the tech world home. The Club’s laggards, meanwhile, come from many corners of the market. The individual stock moves occurred during a second consecutive strong year for Wall Street. The S & P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average jumped 23.3% and 12.9%, respectively for the year, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite surged 28.6%. Each benchmark gauge hit numerous record highs, propelled by continued excitement around generative artificial intelligence adoption, expectations of lower interest rates and Donald Trump’s win in the presidential election. All three dynamics shaped the list of the Club’s top gainers and losers in 2024. Our top two performers, Nvidia and Broadcom , are both chip stocks that reaped the rewards of the AI trade. However, shares of peers that couldn’t find their place in the increasingly competitive AI chip market struggled. Case in point: Advanced Micro Devices was one of our worst performers. We exited that position Tuesday as a result. The Federal Reserve started its long-awaited easing campaign in September, delivering its first interest rate cut since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic. Goldman Sachs and Wells Fargo, among our top gainers, got a lift on that development. Keep in mind: We initiated a position in Goldman less than two weeks ago, and the bulk of its 2024 gains came before then. Wells Fargo and Goldman also were boosted by Trump’s victory in early November, as investors bet on a more lenient regulatory environment during his upcoming four years in the White House. On the other side of the Trump trade was Stanley Black & Decker and Constellation Brands — both sensitive to Trump’s proposed tariff increases and among the Club’s worst performers in 2024. Nextracker , which makes solar tracking systems, also landed on the wrong side of Trump’s win. .SPX .IXIC,.DJI 1Y mountain The S & P 500 versus the Nasdaq and Dow Jones Industrial Average over the past 12 months. Here’s a list of our top five gainers and biggest laggards within the portfolio in 2024, along with with more about what caused the moves in each. The winners are up first. A quick note: Goldman Sachs was the fourth best-performing Club stock in 2024. However, because the stock is so new to the portfolio, we instead zoomed in on Wells Fargo. The longtime Club holding was the sixth biggest gainer in the portfolio, so it was no slouch. On the other hand, AMD stayed on the losers list since we owned it for multiple months and exited the position on the final day of the year. 1) Nvidia: 171.2% After more than tripling in 2023, Nvidia grabbed the top spot again in 2024. The stock continued to surge amid more spending into expanding AI infrastructure, meaning more demand for Nvidia’s market-leading chips. We saw this in several excellent quarterly earnings reports for the company. Investors’ eyes have been on Nvidia’s next-generation Blackwell chip as well, which we think will further solidify its advantage over peers this year. 2) Broadcom: 107.7% Although Broadcom trended higher throughout 2024, the stock levitated in the final month of the year. With a 43% gain, December was the best month for Broadcom stock in its history. It was fueled by the company’s Dec. 12 quarterly earnings release , which highlighted its booming custom AI chip business. Wall Street cheered a bullish long-term forecast for that segment, as well as the announcement that it has two new hyperscale customers. Broadcom’s 2025 outlook also was upbeat, adding to investor excitement. 3) Meta Platforms: 65.4% The Instagram and Facebook parent benefited from the broad strength in large-cap technology stocks. But what really drove Meta’s outperformance over most peers was its successful investments into generative AI. These efforts have improved engagement across its social media platforms, in turn, boosting revenues for its online advertising business. More engagement helps Meta grab a larger chunk of marketing dollars. CEO Mark Zuckerberg has described AI as having a very “positive impact on nearly all aspects of our work.” 4) Amazon: 46.8% Like Meta, shares of Amazon benefited from a continued outperformance in Big Tech stocks. But Amazon’s stellar gross margin performance in e-commerce, along with continued success in the company’s cloud computing business, furthered these gains. Those dynamics were on full display in its October quarterly earnings report. 5) Wells Fargo: 42.7% Wells Fargo had a great year, even though it technically landed just outside the top five. The banking giant surged on expectations of lower interest rates, which benefit its interest-based revenue streams. The firm’s net interest income has taken a beating in recent quarters as customers move their deposits to higher-yielding alternatives. Wells Fargo’s expansion of its investment banking and capital markets division also has been well received by the market. Plus, investor sentiment improved on the election results as the new administration’s less stringent regulatory stance bodes well for the removal of Wells Fargo’s asset cap. The laggards are up next. 1) Nextracker: -22% The solar stock was at the bottom of the pack in 2024. Questions about the state of its revenue backlog hit Nextracker shares hard in early August . But more generally, Trump’s candidacy and eventual victory proved to be a problem, given his less-than-friendly stance on renewable energy. The incoming president has signaled that when it comes to energy, his view is “drill baby, drill.” Although Nextracker raised its full-year profitability outlook last quarter – causing the stock to surge over 20% on Oct. 31 – it’s not been enough to get the stock out of the penalty box. We still have questions about what Trump’s presidency will mean for the stock. 2) Stanley Black & Decker: -18.2% Wall Street has worried about how Trump’s potential tariff increases will impact Stanley Black & Decker’s business given its manufacturing presence in China. Management has said that these may squeeze company profits, resulting in an annual $200 million pretax hit in operating income. The toolmaker is taking steps to offset this risk, though, including raising prices and shifting its supply chain away from China. Stubbornly high mortgage rates, despite the Fed’s interest rate cuts, also have hurt the stock because many investors, including us at the Club, viewed the DeWalt parent as a bet on increased activity in the housing sector. 3) AMD: -18.1% We kept AMD on this list because, unlike Goldman, we owned it for nearly half the year. After trading above $200 a share in March, the stock failed to reach those heights again. In the second half of 2024, in particular, the stock struggled to gain traction amid concerns that its data center AI chip was not capturing as much market share as hoped. Not only did Nvidia’s dominance remain, but it became increasingly clear that custom chip solutions offered by the likes of Broadcom and Marvell Technology were gaining popularity among the deep-pocketed tech giants who crave more computing power. 4) Constellation Brands: -8.6% The Modelo and Corona brewer is in fourth place among the laggards. Investor fears around the possibility of higher tariffs in Mexico weighed on shares in the latter part of the year. We’re not giving up hope, though, as a weakening Peso could help offset this risk. Plus, if management divests its lackluster wine-and-spirits business, this could serve as a catalyst for the stock moving forward. That’s because persistent underperformance in wine and spirits has taken some shine off its strong portfolio of imported Mexican beers. We recently highlighted Constellation as one of the bargain stocks for members to take a closer look at in 2025. We also added to our position in Constellation on Tuesday. 5) Starbucks: -5% Starbucks probably would’ve been much higher up this list if not for the surprise announcement on Aug. 13 that CEO Brian Niccol had been poached from Chipotle to fix the coffee chain’s long list of problems. The session before Nicol’s hiring — and the ouster of Laxman Narasimhan — was announced, shares were down nearly 20% year to date. A belief that Niccol can reverse slumping same-store sales and navigate fierce competition in China breathed new life into Starbucks stock. Niccol in late October detailed a number of ways he plans to turnaround the U.S. operations . Nevertheless, the bullish sentiment on the stock started to wane in the final weeks of 2024. Starbucks shares dropped roughly 11% in December. (See here for a full list of the stocks in Jim Cramer’s Charitable Trust.) As a subscriber to the CNBC Investing Club with Jim Cramer, you will receive a trade alert before Jim makes a trade. Jim waits 45 minutes after sending a trade alert before buying or selling a stock in his charitable trust’s portfolio. If Jim has talked about a stock on CNBC TV, he waits 72 hours after issuing the trade alert before executing the trade. THE ABOVE INVESTING CLUB INFORMATION IS SUBJECT TO OUR TERMS AND CONDITIONS AND PRIVACY POLICY , TOGETHER WITH OUR DISCLAIMER . 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A trader reacts at the New York Stock Exchange at the end of the trading day, after Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump became U.S. president-elect, in New York City on Nov. 6, 2024.
Andrew Kelly | Reuters
A familiar face in 2024 captured the title of best-performing Club stock of the year, and most of its top-performing peers also call the tech world home. The Club’s laggards, meanwhile, come from many corners of the market.
