:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc()/GettyImages-2261788467-f47ed1654af64ba48c3e4d583c8d01d9.jpg "There Are Lots of Big Stock Moves Under the Hood of the S&P 500’s Quiet 2026")
:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc():format(jpeg)/GettyImages-2261788467-f47ed1654af64ba48c3e4d583c8d01d9.jpg)
Key Takeaways
- The benchmark S&P hadn’t moved much through Tuesday’s close. But that quiet action obscures more drama within the index.
- More than a fifth of the stocks in the index have moved by at least 20% this year, according to a new analysis.
Wall Street is behaving like Capitol Hill this year.
As of Tuesday’s close, the S&P 500 was down 0.03% since the start of the year. That’s about as unexceptional as it gets—but it belies a lot of churn below the surface.
According to a recent analysis by Bespoke Investment Group, 117 stocks in the S&P 500 have gained or lost more than 20% so far this year. Meanwhile, just 94 of the index’s components are up or down less than 5%. (Stocks were recently higher; read Investopedia’s full coverage of today’s trading here.)
Why This Matters to Investors
The stock market’s headline number—what the S&P 500 has done this year, which isn’t much—tells one story, but stock pickers may find opportunity in the busy action under the hood of the benchmark index.
As in Washington, D.C., wrote Bespoke’s analysts in a note on Wednesday, “we’ve seen an increase in concentration at the extremes with nothing to show for it.”
The disparity in performance is pronounced in the tech sector, where more than 40% of stocks are either up or down more than 20% this year. Seventeen stocks are sharply higher, including AI “pick and shovel” plays like memory device makers Sandisk (SNDK) and Western Digital (WDC), up 150% and 70%, respectively.
On the flip side are the dozen (mostly software) stocks that have been battered by concerns about AI disruption. They include Intuit (INTU) and ServiceNow (NOW), down a respective 40% and 30%.
Extreme moves are causing the capitalization-weighted S&P 500 to trail the equal-weight index by about 5.5 percentage points, the cap-weighted index’s worst relative performance since 1992, according to Bespoke.
