Core Insights - The S&P 500 is nearing the end of a strong year, with the SPDR S&P 500 ETF delivering a return of 17.22% as of the final trading day of the year, driven by significant themes including a memory supercycle and the maturation of AI infrastructure [3][4] - A global shortage of high-end storage hardware components has led to three semiconductor and data storage stocks outperforming the broader index, even surpassing the performance of the Magnificent Seven [4][7] Company Performance - SanDisk emerged as the top performer in 2025, with a staggering year-to-date increase of 567%, following its spin-off from Western Digital and subsequent inclusion in the S&P 500 [5][6] - SanDisk's success is attributed to its focus on NAND flash technology, which is critical for AI workloads, and the combination of a global shortage of NAND flash memory and rising demand for fast storage solutions [5][6] - The company's fiscal first-quarter earnings for FY2026 showed earnings per share of $1.22, significantly exceeding the consensus estimate of 58 cents, with revenue increasing by 22.6% year-over-year to $2.31 billion [6] Industry Trends - The S&P 500's gains in 2025 were significantly influenced by a shift towards AI hardware, with memory and storage stocks outperforming other sectors [7] - The performance of SanDisk, Western Digital, and Micron was bolstered by shortages in NAND, HDD, and high-bandwidth memory, coupled with increasing demand for AI infrastructure [7]
The 3 Stocks That Crushed the S&P 500 in 2025