Instead, the title for highest stock market return in 2024 belongs to Palantir, the Peter Thiel-founded software firm that specializes in data analytics, which returned 340.5% on the year. Nvidia's 171.2% lands it in third.
Top Warren Buffett Stocks
Coca-Cola (KO), 400 million. Kraft Heinz (KHC), 325.6 million. Apple (AAPL), 300 million. Occidental Petroleum (OXY), 264.3 million.
For stock investors, 2024 was an expectedly great year. Behind the continued bull market for stocks was solid economic growth, falling inflation, Federal Reserve interest-rate cuts, and healthy corporate earnings.
As shown below, the S&P 500 was up more than 23% in 2024, bested by both the Nasdaq (up nearly 29%) and the Nasdaq 100 (up nearly 25%). Those gains were boosted by the Magnificent 7 group of stocks (up nearly 67%) along with a handful of other mega-cap stocks (more on that below).
For instance, Buffett urges the average investor to purchase index funds. “Put 10% of the cash in short-term government bonds and 90% in a very low-cost S&P 500 index fund,” he wrote in his 2013 letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders. Buffett has given this advice for years.
Musk's best investments include PayPal, SpaceX, DeepMind Technologies, Tesla, and The Boring Company. Elon Musk is an engineer, industrial designer, and technology entrepreneur known for disrupting multiple industries. Musk holds the distinction of being the world's richest person as of January 2025.
Despite being the sixth-richest person globally, Warren Buffett continues to drive a 2014 Cadillac XTS he purchased with hail damage. Although he can afford any luxury vehicle, Buffett prefers the practicality of his 10-year-old car.
Since the midpoint of July 2018, Buffett has purchased almost $78 billion worth of Berkshire Hathaway stock, which is far and away more than he's spent buying shares of Apple, Bank of America, and Occidental Petroleum on a combined basis.
Warren Buffett has argued that an investor could be diverse with just 3 stocks in a portfolio. Of course, this is only if you have a strong handle on the companies and know exactly how they are performing, and expected to perform.
A: Five rules drawn from Warren Buffett's wisdom for potentially building wealth include investing for the long term, staying informed, maintaining a competitive advantage, focusing on quality, and managing risk.
Key Takeaways. While holding or moving to cash might feel good mentally and help avoid short-term stock market volatility, it is unlikely to be wise over the long term. Once you cash out a stock that's dropped in price, you move from a paper loss to an actual loss.
When we bumped up our end-2025 forecast for the S&P 500, we implicitly assumed EPS would rise to $280 (280 x 25 = 7,000) by end-2025. S&P 500 EPS have since climbed steadily and appear on course to reach $280 this year. This has largely reflected continued strong growth in EPS in the three big-tech sectors combined.