Top 20 stocks in the first 100 days of Biden’s presidency

Best performers in the S&P 500

Here are the 20 stocks among the S&P 500 that have had the highest total returns (with dividends reinvested) since Biden took office Jan. 20. There’s a second column showing returns since Election Day (Nov. 3, 2020):

Company Ticker Total return - Jan. 20 through April 30 Total return - Nov. 3 through April 30
Seagate Technology PLC STX 53% 88%
Gap Inc. GPS 50% 59%
Nucor Corp. NUE 48% 66%
L Brands Inc. LB 45% 95%
Tapestry Inc. TPR 42% 99%
Wells Fargo & Co. WFC 39% 105%
Dish Network Corp. Class A DISH 38% 70%
News Corp. Class A NWSA 38% 95%
Hanesbrands Inc. HBI 37% 28%
Western Digital Corp. WDC 36% 88%
Snap-on Inc. SNA 36% 47%
HP Inc. HPQ 36% 86%
Mohawk Industries Inc. MHK 36% 76%
Kansas City Southern KSU 36% 60%
Diamondback Energy Inc. FANG 36% 195%
Avery Dennison Corp. AVY 35% 49%
Iron Mountain Inc. IRM 35% 53%
Capital One Financial Corp. COF 34% 93%
CDW Corp. CDW 34% 40%
Robert Half International Inc. RHI 34% 71%

(FactSet)

Those are excellent returns. From the close Nov. 3, the S&P 500 was up 24.1% through April 30.

At the close on Election Day, the S&P 500 had bounced back 51% from its coronavirus pandemic closing low on March 23, 2020. But it was up only 4% for 2020.

So some of the companies on this list have to be considered recovery plays, especially retailers such as Gap Inc. GPS, -2.22% and L Brands Inc. LB, -1.13%

Nasdaq-100

The Nasdaq Composite Index COMP, -0.85% rose 3.8% during Biden’s first 100 days in office. The Nasdaq-100 Index NDX, -0.78%, which includes the largest 100 non-financial companies in the full Nasdaq, was up 4.2%. This index is tracked by the Invesco QQQ Trust ETF QQQ, -0.66%.

Here are the 20 best performers among the Nasdaq-100 during Biden’s first 100 days in office:

Company Ticker Total return - Jan. 20 through April 30 Total return - Nov. 3 through April 30
Moderna Inc. MRNA 43% 159%
CDW Corp. CDW 31% 37%
Kraft Heinz Co. KHC 27% 33%
Alphabet Inc. Class A GOOGL 25% 43%
Applied Materials Inc. AMAT 23% 116%
Facebook Inc. Class A FB 22% 23%
Fox Corp. Class A FOXA 21% 39%
O’Reilly Automotive Inc. ORLY 19% 23%
Marriott International Inc. Class A MAR 17% 55%
Automatic Data Processing Inc. ADP 16% 14%
Comcast Corp. Class A CMCSA 15% 33%
Booking Holdings Inc. BKNG 14% 48%
Ross Stores Inc. ROST 14% 43%
Cisco Systems Inc. CSCO 13% 41%
Keurig Dr Pepper Inc. KDP 13% 30%
Microsoft Corp. MSFT 13% 23%
Nvidia Corp. NVDA 12% 15%
Skyworks Solutions Inc. SWKS 12% 31%
Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc WBA 11% 45%
Idexx Laboratories Inc. IDXX 11% 24%

(FactSet)

In case you are wondering, shares of Tesla Inc. TSLA, +4.79% fell 17% during Biden’s first 100 days in office, for the fifth-worst performance in the Nasdaq-100. The worst performer in the Nasdaq-100 during Biden’s first 100 days was Peloton Interactive Inc. PTON, -0.56%, which was down 37%.

4 Likes

Unfortunately the Seagate ship has sailed…
It was on my watchlist last year.

1 Like

It’s very difficult to guess the future winners. Like some famous investor said:

In the short run, the market is like a voting machine–tallying up which firms are popular and unpopular. But in the long run, the market is like a weighing machine–assessing the substance of a company.

Benjamin Graham (father of value investing and Warren Buffett mentor)

The message is: What matters in the long run is a company’s actual underlying business performance and not the investing public’s fickle opinion about its prospects in the short run.

4 Likes

You guys thing that had anything to do with Biden…all my watch list has taken a big hit since he has taken over.