Meanwhile, funds that trusted oil and gas, suffered losses. In particular, the Direxion Daily S&P Oil&Gas E&P 2X ETF lost 97.3% this year. The Direxion Daily Junior Gold Miners Bear 2X ETF plunged 95.5% in 2020.
This year, the coronavirus pandemic has upended the market and challenged investors, both institutional and individual. Morningstar Inc (NASDAQ: MORN), a leading provider of independent investment research, has conducted research to figure out how US top funds behaved during this hard time and what were the major trends on the market this year. It turned out that funds betting on tech stocks and digital currencies became winners in 2020. Meanwhile, funds that banked on oil and gas companies dropped by nearly 100%.
When COVID-19 broke out, the whole market collapsed, with tech stocks reaching their troughs in March. However, after that, they showed excellent performance, with a more than 60% comeback. Therefore, funds that took a risk and invested in tech stocks, gained billions of dollars this year. The same with funds that bet on digital currencies. For example, one of the US top funds, Grayscale Ethereum Trust that holds Ethereum (ETH), has soared by 333.7% as of December 9. The Bank of Montreal MicroSectors FANG+ 3X Leveraged ETN and the Bank of Montreal MicroSectors FANG+ 2X Leveraged ETN (both of them invest in so-called FANG stocks) reported returns of 301.9% and 201.9% respectively. Such a jump made them the second and third-best performing funds in 2020.
Meanwhile, funds that trusted oil and gas, suffered losses. In particular, the Direxion Daily S&P Oil&Gas E&P 2X ETF lost 97.3% this year. The Direxion Daily Junior Gold Miners Bear 2X ETF plunged 95.5% in 2020.
2020 Best-Buy Stocks and Cryptos that Contribute to US Top Funds
This year, tech stocks included in FANG, FAANG, and FANGMAN were the best performance. For example, the stock of US top online retailer Amazon Inc (NASDAQ: AMZN) gained as much as 71.70% year-to-date. The company took advantage of lockdowns and stay-at-home orders that resulted in increased demand for online shopping. Shares of Apple Inc (NASDAQ: AAPL) soared by 79.77% year-to-date. Netflix Inc (NASDAQ: NFLX) stock added 58.84% this year.
Shares of pharma giants involved in the coronavirus vaccine race have also benefited from the pandemic. To name a few, Moderna Inc (NASDAQ: MRNA) stock has soared by 530.83%, Inovio Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: INO) shares are 210.91% up year-to-date. The stock of another pharma giant Novavax (NASDAQ: NVAX) has gained as much as 3,149.75%.
As for cryptocurrencies, their popularity is becoming wider. In comparison with 2017, when the crypto market data provider CoinMarketCap listed about 80 coins, this number has reached 5,000 this year. Bitcoin (BTC) remains the leading position, followed by Ethereum (ETH), Tether (USDT), XRP (XRP), Litecoin (LTC). Bitcoin Cash (BCH), EOS, Stellar (XLM) have been showing strong performance this year as well.
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