Best-performing tech stocks in December 2024

The most common date for investors to cite as the start of the current bull market run is October 2022.

Which is, indeed, the most recent low as the overheated, post-pandemic market grappled with inflation, higher rates, and Covid-induced growth trajectories for many companies that were not going to be long-lasting.

And with the S&P 500 falling 20% peak-to-trough — and many high-profile stocks doing far worse — 2022 certainly seemed like a bear market to finally end the post-crisis bull.

But as my colleague Jared Blikre flagged on Friday, trader David Settle sliced the market's performance slightly differently, making the current market feel like much more a part of the bull run that began when stocks finally eclipsed their 2007 highs back in 2013.

2024 has already been a spectacular year for the US stock market.

Black Friday is set to add another superlative to the mix.

According to the folks at Bespoke Investment Group, with the S&P 500 up 0.67% with an hour to go in the trading session, the index is on track for its best Black Friday performance since 2012.

Wall Street research serves a few different purposes for the financial media.

But perhaps the most compelling use case as a regular referent for journalists is the window into what the big-money investors these reports actually target want to know about.

And right now, tariffs are dominating the conversation.

The levies Trump may actually impose on some of the US' key trading partners are likely to change over time. Wide uncertainty bands presented by Trump's strategies makes the discussion around these possibilities a robust one.

In a client note published Friday, the team at Capital Economics published the highlights from a recent investor call on the question of Trump's potential tariffs, which the president-elect earlier this week suggested could include new 25% tariffs on imports from Mexico and Canada, and an additional 10% duty on imports from China.

The firm sees US imports falling about 5% in the year after these tariffs are enacted, should that come to pass.

For Canada and Mexico, the GDP impacts could approach 1%.

Some rough math on how much these tariffs would bring in for the US government put estimates around $300 billion, assuming a 10% tariff on all imports.

But this is where the uncertain nature of Trump's threats and what may be enacted really comes through, with the firm writing, "While the potential tariff revenue is therefore not insignificant, Trump’s proposal to fully replace income taxes with tariffs is a non-starter."

And the idea that Trump is merely beginning what could be a long program of exploring new trade arrangements between most of its trading partners is, to our minds, what has investors most interested in the second Trump administration.

"Existing free trade agreements probably won’t save countries," the firm wrote.

"Now it’s Canada and Mexico in the firing line, but Europe could easily catch the next stray bullet if Trump wants to 'encourage' Europe to spend more on [defense]. Germany’s auto sector, in particular, is vulnerable."

Super Micro Computer (SMCI) stock fell 7% on Friday, continuing its wild ride this year.

Last week, shares of the AI server maker rallied nearly 80% after the company hired a new auditor and said it was on track to regain compliance with the Nasdaq over previous financials.

Earlier this week, the company disclosed in an SEC filing it paid back an outstanding loan. It's another sign the company continues to clean up its financial standing, which has come under scrutiny from investors and at least one prominent short-seller.

The stock is still up about 15% this year, though it is trailing the broader market by around 10 percentage points and is a far cry from the more than 300% gain realized in the first few months of 2024.

Microsoft stock (MSFT) was down about 0.8% early Friday after news broke late Wednesday that the Federal Trade Commission has opened a broad antitrust probe into the tech giant.

But at least one Wall Street analyst sees the news coming as no surprise and expects changes at the FTC under the Trump administration to make antitrust worries in the tech space fade away.

"In our view as the dark days for tech with Lina [Khan] at the FTC appear numbered now with a Trump White House, it is not a complete shocker that Wednesday after the bell the FTC announced a broad sweeping investigation into Microsoft as a final shot across the bow at Big Tech from [Kahn] before she departs," Wedbush analyst Dan Ives wrote in a note to clients on Friday.

Ives added that this probe "is much more bark than bite" and will become a secondary concern for the company once President-elect Donald Trump names a new FTC leader.

Current FTC Chair Lina Khan has aggressively pursued antitrust actions against tech giants, including Alphabet (GOOG, GOOGL), Apple (AAPL), and now Microsoft.

The stocks of Apple, Microsoft, and Alphabet are all trailing the S&P 500's 26% year-to-date gain.

Alphabet is currently facing the most serious threat, with a federal judge finding earlier this year the company's Google search engine was run as an illegal monopoly. Earlier this month, the DOJ asked the company to sell its Chrome browser and divest its Android mobile operating system.

Following Trump's election win, investor optimism grew that these various antitrust threats would disappear under his administration. Some legal experts, however, are less confident, as Yahoo Finance's Alexis Keenan reported.

Ives, for his part, sees an end coming for the recent era in which regulators sought to limit Big Tech deals and scrutinize the world's largest companies.

"We believe there will be major shifts in policy against Big Tech over the coming years with Trump in the White House and Khan out at the FTC ... we believe [it is] just a matter of time and will remove a huge thorn in the side of the tech world," Ives wrote.

"As someone that has covered tech throughout the Microsoft vs. US Government trial/soap opera for many years in the 1990's into an ultimate win for Redmond, we believe negotiations and remedies will be much smaller than the fears for Google, Apple, MSFT, Meta and Big Tech."

With US investors looking to square out a strong month for the stock market, all three major indexes opened a holiday-shortened trading session in positive figures.

The blue-chip Dow (^DJI) was up more than 0.3% just moments after the opening bell, while the S&P 500 (^GSPC) was up 0.2%, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq (^IXIC) rose by about 0.1%.

Friday's move higher in the Dow was led by industrial names Boeing (BA) and Caterpillar (CAT), with both stocks up better than 1.2% in the early going.

Economic data: MNI Chicago PMI (November)

Earnings: No notable earnings releases.

Here are some of the biggest stories you may have missed yesterday and early this morning:

Bitcoin ETFs set for record monthly inflow amid Trump hopes

Canada's antitrust watchdog sues Google, wants ad tech breakup

Mexican president confident tariff war with US can be avoided

China's EV boom threatens to push gas demand off a cliff

Disney's doubling down on cruises — and Wall Street is on board

US Preps China Chip Curbs That Stop Short of Early Proposals

With US markets set for a half-day of holiday trading, the two markets giving investors a more normal sense of activity are the more globalized commodities and crypto markets.

And there, things look OK on this Black Friday.

The price of bitcoin (BTC-USD) was up about 2% to trade back above $97,000 early Friday, while oil prices were higher by about 0.7%.

The big news in the oil market is the news on Thursday that OPEC+ would delay its next meeting until Dec. 5 from Dec. 1, taking away any weekend element of surprise for US investors on a big production shift from global oil producers.

Any echoes from the 2014 Thanksgiving weekend move in oil can remain just that.