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00:04 Speaker A
2025 has been a year of surprises. At the outset, many pros were doubting that year three of this bull market could match the outside gains of the prior two.
00:13 Speaker A
But the AI trade keeps driving attention and driving behavior. And on today’s stocks in translation, we’re not looking at the best performers of 2025. We are looking at the names that you, the viewers, checked in on the most on the Yahoo Finance platform. And we’re breaking down our top 10 trending tickers of 2025.
00:32 Speaker A
So let’s take a look at the scores on the door. and here we got the top 10 tickers. The first thing you might notice is that this is an AI dominated list with maybe Bitcoin in the middle as the exception.
00:46 Speaker A
Then you’re going to see the perennial favorites, uh that’s Nvidia and Tesla to the left there. They are in a different zip code. Our Nvidia quote page has a cool quarter billion page views this year, while Tesla clocks in at over 180 million.
01:03 Speaker A
And while Apple is usually top three, it was edged out this year by Palantir with nearly 100 million views. And from there things stabilize as AMD, Amazon, Bitcoin, Meta, Super Micro and Intel, they all clocked 40 to 60 million viewers each.
01:17 Speaker A
Now, let’s take a look at this list from a different perspective. This is our Yahoo Finance heat map and we’re looking at the box size right here. So each box size corresponds to the market cap of the company and all of these are large to mega caps with two in the $4 trillion bucket. That would be Nvidia and Apple,
01:36 Speaker A
all the way down to Intel over here at 180 billion. and in the far lower right, you almost can’t see it there. You can see Super Micro, which is just shy of $20 billion. But the other thing you might notice is that the only losing ticker this year is Bitcoin, although Amazon is pretty close to break even too.
01:52 Speaker A
So each of these has a different story. Now let’s dive into some of the charts that really uh tell this story and this is going to be a year-to-date. So we’ll start with Nvidia here. This has arguably been the poster child for the entire AI trade and you can see it got kind of sucked into the post liberation day redness there, but it has bounced back strong.
02:09 Speaker A
Really hasn’t done much over the last few months, but with 30% gains in a year after almost being up, what is it? a thousand percent over the last three years. There you go, 963%. I think investors are going to take that.
02:19 Speaker A
Now Tesla. Tesla’s really interesting because over the last year, and this is a three-year chart too, it has traced out a cup and handle formation. If it can break above 480, it has the ability to really break out and 2026 could be the year to do this. If it fails at this level, well, maybe it’s got to consolidate a little bit longer.
02:37 Speaker A
Now, let’s take a look at Palantir. This stock is up 2,500% over the last three years. Let’s dial down to a year-to-date and you can see like Nvidia, it hasn’t really done much over the last few months, but still sitting on 140% year-to-date gains.
02:50 Speaker A
Now, Apple year to date, this stock is only up 9%, but it has come back nicely after it just kind of stalled out after the liberation day uh melee where a lot of stocks were taking off, it was going sideways, but it finally caught up over the last few months. and so Apple has been generating recent record highs even as Nvidia has been going sideways.
03:07 Speaker A
Now here’s AMD to round out the top five, 71% year to date. This is a very volatile stock, but again, I think investors will uh happily hold on to gains like that for a stock like AMD.
03:16 Speaker A
Now, Amazon, barely positive for the year. This is a stock you kind of got to look at over this entire three-year bull market. Still up 150%, but this was a year of consolidation. We’ll have to see if 2026 breaks to the upside or the downside.
03:30 Speaker A
And you know what? Bitcoin is a very similar story, sitting on more gains over the last three years, but this has been a year of consolidation. It happens to be down about 10% right now, and 75,000 is a line in the sand that I am watching. I think that gets hit before it takes off again.
03:44 Speaker A
Then Meta, this is another three-year story. Uh hasn’t done much this year, but we’ll have to see if it can continue the trend. 445%, very strong over this bull market.
03:53 Speaker A
Getting towards the end here. Super Micro is a very volatile stock and while it’s up this year a decent percentage, you can see it was up a lot more in early 2024. So this is one of those high beta plays you got to trade with caution, but guess what, the Yahoo Finance audience loves to day trade this stock.
04:06 Speaker A
And finally here’s Intel. This is another kind of uh sine wave pattern here. Let me just dial this down to year to date so you can see it has really taken off over the last few months. It’s become a volatile stock, but it was doing nothing for the first 6, seven, eight months of the year. So I think investors at the end of the day, at the end of the year going to be pleased with this one.
04:24 Speaker A
So let us dial it back down here. I got a few things that are going to tell us what to watch in 2026. So just think of these as the questions that move these tickers. First is the AI spend payback test. Investors are going to want to see the revenue and not just the profits of these uh companies, not just the spending.
04:42 Speaker A
And the next up is margins versus Mega Cap spending. Can these giants keep growing without the profit engine getting dented? Third, keep an eye on the chip cycle inflection point. Does demand for semiconductors, does it broaden out or is it just stay limited to AI?
04:59 Speaker A
Fourth, watch those crypto regulation headlines. 2025 was arguably the best year ever for crypto regulation and Bitcoin isn’t even positive. So let’s see if sentiment can shift. And finally, monitor those rate cuts versus the real economy. If we get more cuts, ask why. Is it a soft landing scenario or are we sinking into recession?
05:17 Speaker A
Bottom line, these were the tickers investors just could not stop watching in 2025. Next year, what matters is whether the stories hold up and that’s where the rubber meets the road. And tune into the Stocks and Translation podcast for more jargon busting deep dives. New episodes can be found Tuesdays and Thursdays on Yahoo Finance’s website or wherever you find your podcast.