When it comes to this question, the answer really depends on who you ask. If we are only looking at the broader indices, you would without hesitation say it has been great to be an investor in the stock market today. With the broader indices continuing to make new all-time highs, many investors may be seeing strong gains in their portfolio this year. After all, the S&P 500 is up by over 11% this year alone. Taking a step back, the unprecedented recovery we saw in March 2020 had caught a lot of investors’ attention. 2020 was certainly the year many new investors came to the stock market for the first time. And for good reasons.
One of the most concentrated investments has been on stay-at-home stocks. This came after many investors were quick to jump into some of the top growth stocks in the stock market. For example, stay-at-home plays such as Zoom (NASDAQ: ZM), Netflix (NASDAQ: NFLX), and Peleton (NASDAQ: PTON) are those that benefit from the stay-at-home measures in place during the lockdowns. If you got in shortly after the stock market crash in March 2020 brought on by the coronavirus pandemic, you would have reaped significant profits. You would still be sitting on nice gains despite the correction in growth stocks in the past few weeks.
But in the stock market today, tech and electric vehicles may no longer be the only sectors you need to go for growth. With Biden’s infrastructure bill, industrial stocks have also been in the limelight. Given the strong uptick in vaccination rates in the U.S., there has also been an ongoing rotation from hyper-growth stocks like tech stocks to reopening stocks. The latter include the likes of stocks in the tourism and airline sectors. Nevertheless, many parts of the world are not exactly out of the woods yet with regards to the pandemic. Therefore, one should tread cautiously even with reopening stocks. These are interesting times in the stock market, and we hope you have a fruitful journey.