The best stocks of 2025: AI, tech, gold, and some surprises

There's nary question that this twelvemonth was a banger for U.S. stocks. Many of the biggest winners won’t astonishment adjacent casual marketplace observers, overmuch little anyone who tin sanction the mega-cap tech giants from memory. And yet, a fewer unexpected names inactive managed to musculus their mode into the apical ranks.

In erstwhile decades, 100%-plus gains were typically the worldly of tiny caps and penny stocks. But the 2020s person flipped that script, and 2025 kept the inclination going, with a acquainted premix of Magnificent Seven names and their nearest peers dominating terms charts and posting returns much often associated with speculative frenzies than established giants.

Breaking it down by class makes the wide inclination ultra-clear.

Western Digital, a large shaper of high-capacity hard drives, gained an eye-watering 275% done precocious December. Seagate Technology, different data-storage play, posted 226% returns arsenic investors stake connected AI-infrastructure demand.

Micron Technology’s 210% surge likewise speaks to the “hard” broadside of the AI commercialized that defined the year. In 2025, the institution rode historical request to grounds revenue, margins, and currency flow, with high-bandwidth representation emerging arsenic a halfway maturation engine. Investors responded by sending the banal — implicit and over, passim the twelvemonth — to caller all-time highs. The 12-month terms illustration looks little similar a hockey instrumentality and much similar a rocket launch.

That aforesaid signifier was seen crossed semiconductor-equipment plays arsenic investors looked beyond GPUs to the full manufacturing stack. Lam Research began the twelvemonth trading astir the $70 mark, and volition adjacent it trading astir the $170 mark, with the banal up astir 150%.

As AI-related hardware rallied, truthful did bundle and level companies with wide AI hooks. Palantir Technologies was among the year’s biggest gainers, rising 157% done precocious December, buoyed by increasing authorities and endeavor contracts and a communicative that framed its bundle arsenic cardinal to AI-driven decision-making.

The AI banal roar didn’t hap successful a vacuum. Retail investors helped powerfulness the trend. So nary wonderment immoderate retail trading platforms besides had a banner year. Robinhood Markets surged arsenic banal marketplace enthusiasm and crypto trading translated into gross momentum, with the banal packing connected a full of 209% done precocious December.

Among the astir absorbing marketplace trends of 2025? The surge of precious metals — accepted safe-haven plays — close alongside tech and growth. It’s an antithetic signifier that harkens backmost to the market’s post-pandemic moves. In immoderate case, golden had a historical run, with prices surging 70% twelvemonth to day done precocious December.