It was a great year for the S&P 500:

  • S&P 500 – up 19%

It was a great year for the FAANGs:

  • Facebook – up 53%
  • Amazon – up 56%
  • Apple – up 46%
  • Netflix – up 55%
  • Google – up 35%

With such eye-popping returns the FAANGs dominated the list of best-performing S&P 500 stocks…or did they?

  1. Align Technology – up 132%
  2. NRG Energy – up 121%
  3. First Solar – up 114%
  4. Vertex Pharmaceuticals – up 104%
  5. Micron – up 101%
  6. Wynn Resorts – up 94%
  7. Boeing – up 89%
  8. PayPal Holdings – up 87%
  9. D.R. Horton – up 86%
  10. Nvidia – up 83%
  11. PulteGroup – up 82%
  12. Centene – up 81%
  13. Activision Blizzard – up 79%
  14. Alcoa – up 78%
  15. Lam Research – up 77%
  16. Red Hat – up 76%
  17. Intuitive Surgical – up 72%
  18. Adobe – up 70%
  19. FMC – up 69%
  20. Illumina – up 68%
  21. CBOE Global Markets – up 68%
  22. Caterpillar – up 68%
  23. Cadence Design Systems – up 68%
  24. The Estee Lauder Companies – up 67%
  25. Avery Dennison – up 62%

And yet I’m told over and over by, um, “experts” that I’m supposed to be an indexer to get the best returns.  Hmmm…