Here are our 4 best stocks — and 4 worst stocks — of 2023 so far

On Jul 4, 2023

Technology stocks ought to take a bow. They were the standout performers in the first half of 2023, powering Wall Street — and the Club’s portfolio – higher over the first and second quarters in impressive fashion. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite recorded its best first half of a year since 1983, rising 32.7% through Friday’s session. In the three months ended June 30, the Nasdaq climbed around 13%. The S & P 500 rose 8.3% in the second quarter to extended its 2023 advance to 15.9%. It’s just the 11th time since 1950 that the S & P has recorded a first-half gain of 15% or more. For its part, the Dow Jones Industrial Average posted a positive first-half performance — but lagged significantly behind the S & P 500 and Nasdaq as it maintains relatively less tech exposure. After rising 3.4% in the second quarter, the 30-stock Dow stood higher by 3.8% year to date. Our portfolio largely followed suit. Our tech holdings, led by Nvidia ‘s (NVDA) ferocious rally, were the clear-cut winners. On the other hand, our biggest laggards varied across sectors — from retail to health care. In most cases, their weakness stemmed from a pivotal event, like disappointing earnings. Here’s a closer look at the Club’s best and worst performers in the first half of 2023, starting with the four winningest stocks. The winners NVDA YTD mountain Nvidia’s year-to-date stock performance. Nvidia occupies the top spot, with shares nearly tripling in value as they rose 189.5% in the first half of the year. The semiconductor firm, which is now worth more than $1 trillion, also was the top-performing S & P 500 stock in the first half. Investor optimism around Nvidia’s essential role in enabling artificial intelligence fueled the stock’s impressive gains. On the hardware side, Nvidia makes cutting-edge graphics processers used to train large-language models, like the popular ChatGPT. And its computing platform CUDA and pretrained models on the software side also create the company’s competitive advantage in AI . Demand for Nvidia’s AI chips has soared, which contributed to the jaw-dropping second-quarter guidance issued in May . It’s also why Nvidia was recently able to downplay potential new U.S. restrictions on chip exports to China : Demand everywhere else is so strong. The market has clearly taken note as estimates have been revised higher. Wall Street now expects Nvidia to earn $7.58 per share in fiscal 2024, according to an average of analyst estimates compiled by FactSet. Remarkably, that’s up 75% from the $4.34 per share analysts expected Nvidia to earn in FY24 at the end of 2022. After entering a correction phase last year, Nvidia’s gaming business has appeared to bottom, too, further boosting sentiment around the stock. META YTD mountain Meta Platform’s year-to-date stock performance. Meta Platforms (META) is both the No. 2 Club stock and S & P 500 constituent in the first half, gaining 138.5% over the first and second quarters. Meta rose 35.4% in Q2 alone….