In This Article:
On the final day of the first quarter of 2025, Madison Mills and Julie Hyman take a look at the best and worst-performing stocks and sectors of the year so far. Among the worst performers are Deckers (DECK) and Tesla (TSLA), while CVS Health (CVS) led gains.
To watch more expert insights and analysis on the latest market action, check out more Morning Brief here.
It is the last day of the first quarter. So we want to take a look at some of the best and worst performing stocks and sectors of the year so far. Consumer discretionary, the worst performing sector, and I talked earlier about what was the worst performing stock in the S&P overall, not just consumer discretionary. It's Deckers, owner of Uggs and Hoka. That is the worst performing stock in the S&P 500. It's joined by Tesla and Las Vegas Sands, which have also been the worst performers in consumer discretionary. They shared teasers earlier, Maddie, um, you know, that that this company came out with its earnings earlier in February, disappointed, disappointed with its forecast, and the stock has not recovered since. In fact, it has just continued to go down, even though, um, analysts broadly still like it.
Great teas.
I ordered a pair of Hokas for one of my kids this weekend. We're a big Hokas household. Hoka sales actually were up 24% in the quarter that they reported, but still there's concern about what's going on with this company going forward. And consumer discretionary, obviously, when we're seeing these consumer sentiment surveys that are weak, yes, Tesla is a big weight within that sector, of course, but there's also a close eye that people are keeping on on these other stocks to see if they're being affected by all this.
And I wonder to what extent some of that negativity around tariffs is getting priced into some of those consumer discretionary names, and maybe the hope is that over time, the real impact is not going to be as bad as is getting priced in right now. Maybe a lift later, but of course we, that remains to be seen. I did want to take a look at the good news for the quarter here. CVS is the top performing stock in the S&P 500 so far this year with health care bouncing back from its position as the weakest sector in 2024 to the second best performer year to date, lagging only energy. What I think is really interesting, obviously, CVS is down today, but it seems like the best performers in the S&P year to date so far are just the underperformers from last year. So perhaps that's a little bit of a rebalancing versus any positive catalyst for this individual stock. I should mention CVS has gotten quite a few price target hikes as of late. They've now got about 70% of the street with a buy, 30% with a hold rating on the stock. So getting a little bit of more positive momentum off the back of thoughts about them being able to handle their balance sheet a little bit more effectively, um, some potential M&A activity moving forward here for the company, slashing bonuses as well. That was another positive catalyst over the quarter. Um, but no huge fundamental change in the business that has a growth story attached that would make it the best performer in the S&P.
Right. I mean, we know that some people have migrated to some parts of health care as a sort of defensive posture. So that could certainly be part of the situation as well. I believe they got a new CEO late last year, so there's also some hopes that he's going to start to turn the company around.
Yeah, health care, financials, energy, some of the safe havens amid.
On a relative basis.
On a relative basis. Very well said. Yes.
I guess so, yeah.