Data story · Stocks
The best performing stock of the year rarely does it twice.
In ten years of Huezle’s stocks data, the best performer of a year never topped the next one, and five of nine finished in the bottom fifth the year after. Here is what a winning year looks like, and what tends to follow it.
Every strip on this page is a real Stocks strip from the Huezle app, drawn by the app’s own code. More about Stocks.
How to read the strips
Each strip is one company’s calendar year, one band per week from January on the left to December on the right. A band is the running year-to-date return at the end of that week: green for positive YTD returns, red for negative YTD returns, near-white for flat for the year. The colour reaches full strength at 65% up or down, so a winner’s strip ends deep green; what differs is how early the green arrives.
This is not the whole stock market. It is the companies in Huezle’s data: a curated list of well-known names, 92 in 2016 and 111 by 2022, with a company joining the year after it listed. Returns are adjusted for splits and dividends. Nothing here is investment advice.
What kind of company wins a year
Eight of the ten winners were technology, internet or electric-car companies, and every one of those eight more than doubled. The two biggest years in the data came back to back.
- Negative YTD Returns
- Flat for the year
- Positive YTD Returns
NIO was 37% down for the year in March 2020 and ended it up 1,173%: each share worth about twelve times its January price.
- Negative YTD Returns
- Flat for the year
- Positive YTD Returns
AMC Theatres topped 2021 with 1,184%, the largest annual return in the data, and its strip is green almost from the first band. It is also the clearest case of a winner with nothing to do with technology. AMC appears at the bottom end of the data even more often than the top.
The year oil won
- Negative YTD Returns
- Flat for the year
- Positive YTD Returns
The exception is 2022, when only 18 of the 111 companies finished up at all and the middle one lost 25.9%. The winner was ExxonMobil, up 87.5%, followed by Chevron and Lockheed Martin: oil and defence, not software. The only other losing year for the middle company was 2018, down 2.8%. In every other year at least seven in ten of the companies ended higher.
What happens the year after
- Negative YTD Returns
- Flat for the year
- Positive YTD Returns
NIO followed its 1,173% with a 35% fall in 2021, ranking 102nd of 107. That is the usual pattern rather than the exception. Of the nine winners from 2016 to 2024, five finished in the bottom fifth the following year: AMD, Etsy, NIO, AMC and ExxonMobil. AMC went from first in 2021 to 110th of 111 in 2022, down 85%. Coinbase did the reverse, from the bottom of 2022 to the top of 2023.
- Negative YTD Returns
- Flat for the year
- Positive YTD Returns
Only one winner stayed near the top. Palantir led 2024 with 365% and was second in 2025 with 110%. Nvidia comes closest to a regular, in the top three in 2016, 2023 and 2024 without ever finishing first.
What a strip cannot tell you. A year-to-date return starts again from zero every January, so these strips show each calendar year on its own. A company can be the best performer of a year and still be worth less than it was a year earlier: Coinbase’s 392% rise in 2023 left it about 31% below where it started 2022.
For one year week by week, see the 2020 crash in colour. For how often companies talk about AI, see the companies that talk about AI the most. The rest of the winners and losers are left for you to find in the Stocks category.
Huezle draws one company’s year and asks which company it is. See if you can spot a winner from its colour.
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Does the best performing stock one year do well the next?
Rarely, in Huezle’s data of about 110 well-known companies. From 2016 to 2024, no year’s best performer topped the following year, and five of the nine finished in the bottom fifth. Palantir, first in 2024 and second in 2025, came closest. This is not a ranking of the whole market and not investment advice.
What was the best performing stock of 2025?
Among the 111 well-known companies in Huezle’s data, Robinhood had the biggest return in 2025, up 179%, followed by Palantir at 110% and Intel at 91.6%. That is not a ranking of the whole market.
Which stocks did best in 2022?
In 2022 only 18 of the 111 companies in the data finished the year up. The best were ExxonMobil, up 87.5%, Chevron, up 58.5%, and Lockheed Martin, up 40.5%.
More guides
- The 2020 stock market crash, in colour.How 103 household-name stocks moved through the March 2020 crash, week by week: who bounced back by summer, who soared, and who ended 2020 far below where it began.
- Which companies talk about AI the most?Mentions of AI in 40 big companies’ 10-K annual reports, 2011 to 2025, drawn as strips of colour. Who said it early, who said it most, and the 2023 wall.
- How to read a century of presidential elections in colour.US presidential elections since 1900 drawn as strips of colour, one band per state from west to east. Learn to read the eras from four real strips.
- When did the South flip from Democrat to Republican?The Solid South in colour: how Southern states went from voting Democratic by 90 points to reliably Republican, told in four election strips from 1920 to 2024.
Now try naming one yourself.
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