Stake reveals top performing stocks on its platform this year

A stock market trading app has analysed how key events of this year have impacted the US stock market, to highlight top trends, investor patterns and big shifts in the market, along with the businesses that have thrived and sank in 2020.

The platform, Stake, highlighted five of the best performing stocks throughout 2020, each one benefiting in its own way from the stay-at-home protocols seen across a lot of countries for large parts of the year.

1. Zoom – remote meetings

At the start of the year Zoom shares were around $61.2, this rose to $106 when the whole working environment was forcibly changed in March and are now sitting at $362. That has been a 491% growth throughout the year.

2. Slack – remote working

Slack started the year at $23.02, dropped to $17.04 when the hysteria broke out early this year and increased to a steady $29.93 (a 76% rise) since the start of the lockdowns. The recent news around the SalesForce acquisition has pushed the price even higher to $43.84 – an increase of 90% since the start of the year.

3. Amazon – remote shopping

Amazon, the most valuable share to make the top five, began the year at $1898 before dropping to $1689 when the lockdowns began. Since then it has now risen to $3098, with a big increase of 63% since pre-March 2020 levels.

4. Netflix – remote entertainment

Netflix also took an initial dip during the period that began in March this year from $329 down to $298.84. However, since becoming one of the main forms of entertainment this year, it has risen by 45% to $476.62

5. Peloton – remote exercise

As people around the world turned to new forms of exercise while confined to their homes, shares for Peloton’s virtual exercise classes rose by 112% this year from $29.74 to $112.05

If investors were to have invested $1000 equally into these five stocks at the beginning of the year, they would currently have a portfolio worth $2900.

While stocks for companies specialising in remote and virtual arenas proved to be lockdown-proof, it was a different story for stocks in companies that could not function remotely such as the travel and resort industry. However, despite the big hit that a lot of these companies took this year, Stake highlighted that even some of the most 2020-sensitive stocks have rallied from their March lows. For example, Royal Caribbean Cruises initially saw a 78% drop from $134.65 to $29.94 at the start of the whole situation, but has since grown 153% since March to reach $75.78.

The platform also pointed out that the US stock market as a whole has recovered swifter than the UK:

• The benchmark of the UK’s FTSE 100 was $7604 at the start of the year, which dropped to $5151 in March. Currently it is recovering and is at $6410.69, which is a 24% rise since March and a net drop of -16% since January.
• The US’ S&P benchmark was $324.87 in January, which dropped to $239.85 in March and has since bounced back to $360.76. This is a 50% rise since March and a positive 11% increase since the start of the year.

Stake is a financial trading app that gives its traders access to more than 3,800 US stocks and ETFS. It doesn’t charge any commission fees on trades, brokerage or custody. Instead the pricing structure is simple, it charges a 0.5% FX USD transfer fee on deposits and withdrawals.

Matthew Leibowitz, CEO of Stake, said “You only have to look at the markets to see what a strange and inconsistent year 2020 has been across the globe. It has been reassuring however that even with an ongoing global situation and a presidential election like no other that the markets have managed to not only survive but bounce back, and in some cases bounce back stronger than ever.

“Several of these stocks have been in our 10 most bought equities this year on Stake; we see that as a good sign that our community of traders are capitalizing on the access we give them” he concluded