Infographic: The Winners and Losers on the U.S. Stock Market (2024)

When it comes to performance on the U.S. stock markets, the Big Tech, semiconductor and asset management sectors have been among the best performing in 2021 according to an analysis of the S&P 500 stocks conducted by Visual Capitalist with data from finviz.com. While the reasons for their successes like resource scarcity and a larger focus on e-commerce and online solutions during the pandemic are obvious, there are also losers in unexpected areas as our chart shows.

For the longest time, Chinese e-commerce firms like Alibaba, Meituan or Pinduoduo have been comparably safe investment bets, with the People's Republic leading the segment worldwide in terms of overall revenue. The reasons it became one of the worst-performing sectors in 2021 are manifold, but can largely be traced back to tighter regulations for tech companies and proposed amendments to its e-commerce law by the Chinese government in an effort to improve data security and prevent further monopolization. Another unlikely candidate for a bad year is the precious metal miners sector. Due to the stability of the prices for gold and silver this economic sector is normally able to weather inflation and uncertain price developments in more volatile areas. This year, both precious metals had negative returns on the year, which in turn caused plummeting stock prices for companies like Silvercorp, China's largest primary silver producer with four mining operations in the People's Republic.

While the stock exchange is known for its volatility especially in quickly developing sectors like tech and e-commerce, the past year still threw some unexpected curveballs in this regard. After the first pandemic year, the start of the coronavirus vaccine rollouts, the emergence of new dominating virus variants and the ongoing semiconductor shortage played important roles in influencing the stock market for better or worse. With the supply chain disruptions and shortages not going away any time soon and the rising number of COVID-19 cases as an additional cause for concern, these factors are still likely to influence the U.S. stock market in the year to come.