Visualizing S&P 500 Tech Stocks Performance | Infographic | InsightsArtist (2024)

S&P Tech Stocks Gained by 37% in 2021

There was volatility in the market in 2020 after the COVID-19 pandemic hit the world. As the world started adjusting to the new normal and returning to business, the market saw an upward trend in 2021. The S&P index generated a 27% gain for the year, with all the 11 sectors of the indices posting double-digit gains. Among them, tech stocks outperformed with a gain of 37%.

The infographic visualized the performance of S&P tech companies that closed out 2021 with a market capitalization greater than $200 billion. The majority was gainers, whereas some didn’t have such a great year.

14 IT Companies with a Market Capitalization Greater than $200 Billion

At the end of 2020, there were nine S&P tech companies that had a market cap greater than $200 billion. One year later, the number grew to fourteen. Two companies finished 2021 with a market cap greater than $2 trillion: Apple and Microsoft. Apple had a gain of 28.2%, while Microsoft recorded a 49% boost. Moreover, Apple became the first US company to hit $3 trillion market cap soon after the New Year, while Microsoft became the second US company worth more than $2 trillion.

Bull: The Largest Gain Was 128.5% with Nvidia

Nvidia, the inventor of GPU, stood with the largest gain of 128.5%. Its market cap jumped from $323.24 billion to $738.62 billion. The market cap of the company was the third largest in the IT sector at the end of 2021, surpassing Visa ($470.89 billion) and Mastercard ($354.29 billion).

In November 2021, Nvidia reported an all-time-high revenue of $7.10 billion for the third quarter fiscal 2022. This was a 9% growth from the previous quarter and 50% up from the previous year. Furthermore, the company expects the next quarter revenue to be $7.40 billion. This confident estimate is backed by its plan to further strengthen artificial intelligence workload by building an AI supercomputer.

Bear: PayPal Lost by Close to 20%

Contrary to Nvidia was PayPal, a fintech that operates online payments. The company lost its market cap by 17.8%, from $274.41 billion to $225.59 billion. In November 2021, PayPal released its third quarter results with a lower estimated growth for the next quarter. This disappointed investors and its share price plunged by 12% following the announcement. The drop was the biggest for PayPal since March 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic was declared.

In the same month, Bernstein analysts downgraded PayPal shares from a buy to hold for three reasons: the increasing concentration of e-commerce within big players, the slowing share gains because of other online solutions such as Buy Now Pay Later and Apple Pay, and lastly increasing competition due to rapid innovation from peers such as Klarna and SQ.