Markets

Visualized: The Top S&P 500 Stocks Over 20 Years

Published

10 months ago

December 26, 2023

Marcus Lu

Article/Editing:

Dorothy Neufeld

Top Performing S&P 500 Stocks Over 20 Years

The Top S&P 500 Stocks Over 20 Years

Everyone knows that Apple has seen impressive returns in recent years, but looking back 20 years is even more striking.

As the best performing S&P 500 stock since 2003, it has returned a jaw-dropping 59,918% in returns. Yet like Apple, several other companies have seen notable returns, rewarding investors who stayed the course.

This graphic shows the top S&P 500 stocks over the last two decades, with data from YCharts.

Top S&P 500 Performers

Here are the best performing S&P 500 stocks, ranked by their 20-year total returns:

Rank	Company	Ticker	Sector	20 Year Return
1	Apple	AAPL	Information Technology	59,918%
2	Monster Beverage	MNST	Consumer Staples	59,299%
3	NVIDIA	NVDA	Information Technology	28,712%
4	Intuitive Surgical	ISRG	Health Care	18,221%
5	Booking Holdings	BKNG	Consumer Discretionary	16,299%
6	Netflix	NFLX	Communication Services	13,442%
7	Old Dominion Freight Line	ODFL	Industrials	9,403%
8	SBA Communications	SBAC	Real Estate	7,356%
9	Copart	CPRT	Industrials	6,592%
10	Regeneron Pharmaceuticals	REGN	Health Care	6,296%
11	Amazon	AMZN	Consumer Discretionary	5,314%
12	West Pharmaceutical Services	WST	Health Care	4,981%
13	Tyler Technologies	TYL	Information Technology	4,767%
14	O'Reilly Automotive	ORLY	Consumer Discretionary	4,413%
15	Vertex Pharmaceuticals	VRTX	Health Care	3,962%

As we can see, six stocks soared over 10,000% led by Apple, Monster, and Nvidia.

Part of this can be explained by the fact that shares of Apple and Monster were trading for mere cents in the 1980s.

Meanwhile, Intuitive Surgical (#4) IPO’d in 2000, and produces robotics used in surgeries.

With 13,442% returns, Netflix (#6) IPO’d in 2002, and was priced at $1 per share. The streaming giant projects its operating margins will hit 20% in 2023.

Overall, the top sectors for the best performing stocks were distributed across sectors, with tech, health care, and consumer discretionary seeing the highest number of risers.