Why so many stocks are suddenly defying gravity

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. A lot of stocks have gone almost straight up. The reason is simple: the world is changing fast.

It feels like every day someone says, “Did you see that stock? It’s gone straight up." They’re not wrong. Roughly 18% of S&P 500 stocks were up at least 10% for the year as of Friday morning, versus an average of just 9.4% of the index’s names making such a move through January 16 in the past five years, according to Dow Jones market data. This continues an ongoing trend.

We counted dozens of stocks — mostly within the technology, financial, and metals mining sectors, that are up 50% or more in the past year. Now, this group of surging shares accounts for over $4 trillion of market capitalization. Many of their charts look like parabolic moves—almost straight lines higher.

The latest examples are Micron Technology, Western Digital, and SanDisk, all benefitting from insatiable memory demand from companies—such as Nvidia—that are making artificial intelligence chips. Those memory stocks are up more than 200% in the past year. Micron was up more than 5% Friday.

For tech more broadly, demand is rising as companies adopt AI agents in their software to boost efficiency and cut costs. That’s driving semiconductor demand through the roof because data centers need massive compute to train AI models. A few years ago, chip makers Nvidia, Advanced Micro Devices, and Broadcom had their moments.

Now the memory players are in the spotlight. Even other AI-related names have had their moment in the sun. Amphenol, for instance, makes small connectors, and is seeing a growing portion of its sales come from data centers.