The S&P 500 is on the verge of closing out another formidable year for investors, with the SPDR S&P 500 ETF (NYSEARCA: SPY) delivering a return of 17.22% heading into the final trading day of the year. And the year was defined by a set of powerful themes. Perhaps most notable was the massive memory supercycle and the continued maturation of AI infrastructure. As the early excitement around AI software cooled, capital rotated aggressively toward the physical hardware required to store, move, and process unprecedented volumes of data.
And with a global shortage of high-end storage hardware components, three stocks in the semiconductor and data storage ecosystem dominated the index, outperforming even the Magnificent Seven.
