56 stocks are withheld from this ranking because their price history is under review.
The gain covers the period; price, market cap, sector and country show each company as it is today.
Swipe or scroll the table sideways for more columns.
Among the 3,356 NYSE, Nasdaq and NYSE American stocks currently eligible for this ranking, LWLG (Lightwave Logic Inc) has the highest gain in 2021 with +1,418%. Following are AEHR (+899%) and EP (+815%). Top performing sectors: Basic Materials (+377% avg, 1 in top 10), Real Estate (+336% avg, 1 in top 10), Consumer Cyclical (+331% avg, 1 in top 10).
This ranking shows the top performing US stocks and biggest stock gainers of 2021, calculated from January 1st to the last trading day of 2021. See which stocks delivered the highest returns in 2021. Using split-adjusted data ensures accurate performance calculations that account for stock splits and corporate actions.
Year-to-date performance helps investors identify stocks that have been outperforming the market in the current year, revealing which names led that year.
Among the 3,356 NYSE, Nasdaq and NYSE American stocks currently eligible for this ranking, LWLG (Lightwave Logic Inc) has the highest gain in 2021 with +1,418%. It is followed by AEHR (+899%) and EP (+815%). These are the largest gains in this ranking rather than recommendations, and a large percentage on a small company is the ordinary shape of the top of this board.
Every figure runs from January 1 to December 31, 2021, measured on split-adjusted closing prices, so a split inside the year contributes nothing to the number. The window has a fixed start rather than a rolling one, which is what separates this board from the 52-week ranking: on 1 January every figure here resets to zero while the 52-week figures carry on.
3,356 companies with a market capitalization above $100 million traded on NYSE, Nasdaq and NYSE American, each with at least one trading day inside 2021. A company needs only one close inside the year to qualify here, whereas the 52-week board needs a close a full year back, which is why this board admits more companies than that one: every company listed during 2021 appears here and cannot appear there.
Because that company's return did not accrue over the whole period. A symbol whose current trading history began inside 2021, through a recent listing or a relisting, has no January price to measure from, so its figure runs from the day that history begins and the dagger says so. Reading such a row as a year-to-date return would compare a partial window against full ones.
The five highest-gaining companies sit in Basic Materials, Technology, Energy, with the leader LWLG in Basic Materials. That describes the top of this list, not a sector ranking: the board orders individual companies by their own price change and computes nothing at sector level, across NYSE, Nasdaq and NYSE American.
Year-to-date (YTD) performance measures how much a stock's price has changed since January 1st of the current year. This metric is valuable for several reasons:
Several factors can influence a stock's year-to-date performance:
See exactly how much a YTD top performer would have returned on your investment with our Stock Return Calculator. Planning regular investments? The DCA Calculator shows how dollar-cost averaging into these stocks would have performed.
