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Black Friday and Cyber Monday - five of this year’s best stocks

With Black Friday and Cyber Monday taking place in the coming days, here are some of AvaTrade’s best performing stocks from the entire year.

Groupon

Founded in 2008 as a deal-of-the-day website, Groupon grew dramatically in popularity. Indeed, in December 2010 Groupon was growing faster than Apple, Facebook, or Google. Since then, the stock price has risen and fallen over time, as is to be expected. After a warning earlier this year from the UK competition watchdog to ensure it is complying with consumer protection law, Groupon has recovered and is going back to basics. In the past few years, Groupon has expanded to sell products directly to consumers in addition to selling coupons. Announced at the start of 2020, this change has now been made and the stock price reflects this favourably. As we enter 2022, we will be monitoring to see how the deals giant fares.

Macy’s Inc

The price of Macy’s, the major American department store chain, has rapidly increased this past year. Shares are up considerably over 100% since the start of the year, with the company managing its post-pandemic recovery expertly. Macy’s management team significantly reduced expenses on a permanent basis and increased the emphasis on its digital sales channel. With these moves, it’s apparent that management has acted decisively to ensure the business is in a strong position to ride out the current economic uncertainty, causing Macy’s long-term profit margins to soar like a firework. The burning question on the mind of many traders is whether the trend will continue or if the stock will start to fall.

Amazon

Big news for Amazon this year was the announcement that Jeff Bezos was stepping down as CEO with Andy Jassy taking his place. Andy has a long history with both cloud computing and Amazon, having worked at the company since 1997. Corporate changes can have a significant impact on stock prices, and this was evident here with the stock closing over 3.5% higher when Andy took charge on the 5th of July 2021. The Amazon Web Services (AWS) division is now the world’s leading cloud computing service provider, and in 2020, it was responsible for over 52% of Amazon’s operating income. Andy Jassy was previously leading this section of the business so traders and investors are confident that he will be able to take Amazon to the lead in future tech areas such as Robotics, Virtual Reality, and the Internet of Things. It remains to be seen how this will impact stock prices in 2022.

Apple

The technology giant has seen its share price rise in the last 12 months, having been able to successfully manage potential supply chain issues caused by the Covid-19 pandemic to date. 2021 has been a strong year for the company from a financial perspective in the last year, including recording its largest quarter by revenue of all time during the first quarter of 2021. In early May 2021, Apple share price rose by 4.13%, off the back of launching a host of new products in late April 2021, including AirTags, new iMac models, an updated Apple TV 4K, and refreshed versions of the 11 and 12.9-inch iPad Pro. However, Apple recently lost its title of most valuable public company to Microsoft, with its market cap falling to $2.46 trillion compared to Microsoft’s rising to $2.49 trillion. Will Apple return to the mountain top, or is Microsoft set to remain the most valuable public traded company?

Nike

While the sportwear giant did suffer supply chain disruption as a result of the continued COVID-19 pandemic, it has overall been a good year for Nike. As one of the world’s largest sports apparel and equipment sellers, Nike is a popular stock as well as a popular brand. Nike has maintained an active portfolio throughout its existence, making key acquisitions and divestitures in the process. These acquisitions tend to have a corresponding positive impact on the share price. For example, in February 2021 Nike acquired Datalogue, a leading data integration platform, and the share price increased as a result. Moreover, Nike’s regular updates to the products that they make and sell means that consumers remain interested.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by AvaTrade .