The top and bottom five stocks in the Russell 1000 Index were chosen by finding the stocks with the highest and lowest year-to-date total return through the close of the market on Dec.
AI and COVID-19 vaccines have helped boost two of the other top five stocks, and rebounding oil prices have driven the shares of the last two of the top five.
As for the bottom five stocks, two were payment processors that suffered significant drops in business during the pandemic, two had relatively recently gone public and never managed to meet expectations, and one, Peloton, suffered as the pandemic conditions that had driven its stock up began to ebb.
Its products include video game hardware and accessories, software, and collectible items. GameStop reported a net loss of $61.6 million on net sales of $1.2 billion in Q2 of its 2021 fiscal year , the three-month period ended July 31, 2021.
A short squeeze happens when a heavily-shorted stock rises unexpectedly, forcing short sellers looking to cut their losses and close out their positions by buying the stock, which pushes the price higher.
Upstart uses machine learning to look at more variables than normal credit-risk assessments, which it says will allow banks to lend to more borrowers with less risk due to the increased accuracy of this method.
Upstart’s shares have exploded since they first began trading on the Nasdaq following the company’s initial public offering in December 2020.
Moderna reported net income of $3.3 billion on revenue of $5.0 billion in Q3 FY 2021, which ended Sept.
The company generated its first profit early in 2021 as revenue soared on sales of the vaccine, its first product to receive FDA approval.
Net earnings improved significantly from the net loss of $91 million in the same quarter last year, with revenue having risen 224.8% YOY.
Unlike in past cycles, many oil and gas companies are returning profits to shareholders rather than investing in future growth.
It is the largest leaseholder and among the largest oil producers in the Bakken oil field region of North Dakota and Montana.
Like Devon Energy, Continental Resources is benefitting soaring oil prices that have reached highs this year not seen since 2014 as the global economy recovers from last year’s pandemic shock and supply shortages abound.
This was a substantially worse result than the R$249.2 million profit on only R$934.3 million in revenue a year earlier.
One big reason StoneCo’s shares have plummeted this year is that the company offers payments solutions in Brazil, a country where many businesses have been closed due to the pandemic and e-commerce only accounts for about 3.2% of total retail spending.
It offers a suite of tools for developing, deploying, and operating large-scale AI, predictive analytics, and Internet of Things applications.
In Q1 FY 2022, the company missed analysts’ earnings expectations, reporting a quarterly loss per share of $0.37 versus analysts’ expectation of a $0.28 loss per share.
The company connects businesses and consumers across 70 payment types in more than 40 currencies around the world.
Shares of Paysafe, which went public through a special purpose acquisition company merger in late March 2021, have failed to attract investor optimism and have continued to all throughout the year.
Its proprietary technology platform leverages machine-learning algorithms that analyze insurance behavioral data in order to help individuals find the best health insurance plan for their specific needs.
The company’s failure to meet earnings estimates over the past four quarters is not helping boost investor optimism for its stock price.
Peloton Interactive is an interactive fitness platform with a community of more than 5.9 million members, as of June 30, 2021.
In its latest earnings report, Peloton indicated that quarterly subscriber growth was the slowest it has been since the company went public two years ago.
The others were either in fast-growing sectors, like AI firm Upstart or firms that benefitted from economic recovery such as oil companies Devon and Continental.
Out of the bottom stocks, two, StoneCo and Paysafe, were payment processors whose businesses have suffered tremendously due to the pandemic, and two more, GoHealth and C3.ai had gone public fairly recently in the IPO boom of the last 2 years and failed to meet expectations.