The market since our ledger opened

Before the ledger opened: the war and the March low (a retrospective read)

Everything in this section happened before tickerseer published its first weekly calls, so it is market history we are reading back, not anything we called at the time.

The S&P 500 closed at 6,979 on January 27. US and Israeli forces struck Iran on February 28 (Congressional Research Service). From the last close before the strikes (6,879 on February 27) the index fell 7.8% to 6,344 on March 30, its low for the year. A ceasefire followed on April 8 (House of Commons Library), and the index rose 16.6% from the March 30 low to the May 8 close. Most of the recovery from the low happened in those six weeks, before our window starts.

Since May 8: a small index gain, and more stocks in a drawdown

tickerseer published its first weekly earnings calls for the week of May 11, 2026, so this study starts at the close on Friday, May 8 and runs to the close on Thursday, October 15. Over that window the S&P 500 went from 7,399 to 7,744, a gain of 4.7%. It dipped to 7,267 on June 10 and reached its high for the year, 7,819, on October 6. The Federal Reserve raised its target range by a quarter point on September 16, its first hike since 2023 (Fox Business).

The typical stock did less. The median company among the 1,180 we measured is up 2.6%. 659 rose and 520 fell, and 509 beat the S&P 500's total return, dividends included, of 5.2% (SPY).

Equal weight beat cap weight anyway. With dividends, the equal-weight S&P 500 ETF (RSP) returned 6.1% against 5.2% for SPY, which weights companies by size. The Nasdaq-100 ETF (QQQ) returned 2.6%.

Drawdowns spread at the same time. On October 15, 70.3% of the companies we measured closed at least 10% below their highest close of the past two years. On May 8 the share was 59.1%. 40.6% are at least 20% below their high, and 5.6% at least half below it. So the index ended the window about 1% under its October 6 high while seven in ten of these companies sat in a correction of their own.

Who carried the index

We estimated each S&P 500 member's dollar gain from its market cap and its return over the window. Ten companies added about $3.3 trillion between them, roughly the index's whole net gain of about $3.3 trillion.

Nvidia is not on the list: it is up 1.2% over the window. Five large companies pulled the other way and lost about $1.7 trillion between them: Alphabet (−12.8%), Broadcom (−19.7%), Tesla (−15.4%), Amazon (−6.6%) and Oracle (−30.9%).

Sectors and industries

Across all 1,180 companies, grouped by sub-industry (five or more members), life sciences tools led with a median of +45.8% over 15 companies, then oil refining (+42.2%) and HR and employment services (+36.0%). Construction and engineering was weakest (−24.5%), then casinos (−24.3%) and construction materials (−22.2%). Semiconductors had a median of −16.4% across 20 companies, in the same window that Micron (+24.7%) and AMD (+23.5%) were among the index's largest dollar gainers.

The largest gains, and the reported reasons

Moderna (MRNA), +335.1%. On August 19 Merck and Moderna said their Phase 3 trial of the mRNA therapy intismeran with Keytruda in resected melanoma met its primary endpoint of recurrence-free survival at an interim analysis (AJMC). By our closes the stock rose 177.0% that day.

Okta (OKTA), +148.5%. Two earnings reactions did most of it. By our closes it rose 30.1% the session after its May 28 report and 28.6% the session after its August 26 report (Motley Fool).

Recruit Holdings (RCRRF), +137.7%. The Tokyo-listed parent of Indeed jumped on May 18 after a full-year profit forecast above estimates (Bloomberg).

Atlassian (TEAM), +137.0%. Its August 6 report showed cloud revenue growth speeding up again (SiliconANGLE), and by our closes the stock rose 35.3% the next session.

Snowflake (SNOW), +119.8%. By our closes it rose 36.5% the session after its May 27 report. It jumped again after its September 2 report, which beat on earnings and revenue (SiliconANGLE).

Natera (NTRA), +108.4%. Second-quarter revenue grew strongly and the company raised its revenue guidance for the year (GuruFocus).

The refiners: Marathon Petroleum (MPC) +96.0%, Valero (VLO) +85.8%, Phillips 66 (PSX) +70.7%. The war with Iran widened refining margins, and all three traded near record highs by late July (MarketBeat).

Illumina (ILMN) +88.8% and Charles River (CRL) +72.4%. Life sciences tools was the strongest industry group. Charles River set a 52-week high on August 5 after second-quarter earnings beat estimates (MarketBeat).

AI hardware: HPE +88.0%, NetApp (NTAP) +82.9%, Dell +82.1%. Demand for AI servers and storage carried all three for most of the window. On October 14 Barclays downgraded Dell to neutral, arguing that memory price pass-through explained much of its gain, and Dell fell more than 11% that day (Dow Jones via Tiger). Dell closed October 15 at 473.39, 19.5% below its September 17 close of 588.40.

Cybersecurity: CrowdStrike (CRWD) +85.4%, Palo Alto Networks (PANW) +78.1%. Both rose on demand for security tools through the summer. Palo Alto's September 1 report showed fourth-quarter revenue up 34% and Next-Generation Security ARR up 63% (company release).

The largest declines, and the reported reasons

Oklo (OKLO), −58.6%. The stock peaked on May 11 and slid through the window. In the first half the company sold new shares and its share count more than doubled (Nasdaq).

Albemarle (ALB), −51.5%. Its own second quarter was strong, with higher lithium pricing lifting earnings (company release). The stock fell anyway, tracking lithium carbonate futures, which dropped to a near ten-month low in October (GuruFocus).

Rocket Lab (RKLB), −47.6%. It peaked in late May. By July 22 coverage pointed to its planned purchase of Iridium, insider selling and money moving toward SpaceX (Motley Fool).

Lynas Rare Earths (LYSDY), −45.6%. On October 1 its yearly profit came in under analysts' expectations and it announced an all-share bid for Meteoric Resources, and the shares fell (Motley Fool Australia). We found no verified reason for the earlier part of the decline.

Stellantis (STLA), −43.8%. We could not find a reason for this window's decline in coverage we could check, so we leave it without one.

The Trade Desk (TTD) −43.1% and AppLovin (APP) −40.4%. The Trade Desk fell sharply on August 7 after a second-quarter revenue miss and weak guidance, followed by a string of downgrades (24/7 Wall St.). AppLovin's August 5 report came in narrowly below revenue estimates (FX Leaders).

Dick's Sporting Goods (DKS), −36.7%. On August 25 it cut its outlook for the year, citing weaker athletic demand that hit Foot Locker hardest, and the stock plunged (Fox Business).

Rollins (ROL), −36.5%. It fell on July 23 when second-quarter sales beat estimates but adjusted earnings growth fell short (Motley Fool).

Partners Group (PGPHF), −37.0%. On September 1 the private markets firm said it would replace its chief executive, and the shares fell again (FashionNetwork, via Reuters).

Vertiv (VRT), −36.8%. Its July report grew earnings and revenue, and the shares fell anyway (DatacenterDynamics).

The large-cap drags. Broadcom dropped sharply in early June after its AI chip guidance disappointed (Channelchek). Oracle slid in June over heavy AI spending and the debt to pay for it (Spokesman-Review). Alphabet fell as its promised Gemini flagship slipped past June, and by early September was on its longest losing streak since 2015 (24/7 Wall St.).

Where our own calls fit

We publish one-week options calls around earnings and grade them on the public ledger, where voided calls are listed rather than graded. 23 graded calls inside this window were on companies named in this study. 17 settled as wins and 6 as losses. One more call, on AMD for the week of August 24, was voided and is not graded.

The CrowdStrike and Palo Alto rows are worth reading twice. We were bearish on both for the week of June 1. By our closes CrowdStrike fell 8.2% and Palo Alto 3.4% that week, and both calls settled as wins. Over the full window CrowdStrike is up 85.4% and Palo Alto 78.1%. A one-week call reads one earnings reaction. It says nothing about where a stock goes over five months, and we keep the two apart.

How we measured, and what this cannot tell you

Window: the close of May 8, 2026, the last session before our first published week, to the close of October 15, 2026.

Universe: the core companies we collect every week (the S&P 500 and MSCI World). Of the 1,224 in our latest weekly collection, we kept 1,180 with clean prices on both dates and dropped 44: takeover targets and delistings, and foreign over-the-counter lines whose price history shows unadjusted splits or ratio changes. The screen drops any single-session move above 45% inside the window that we could not tie to news, and any single-session fall above 45% in the two years before it, which is how an unadjusted split leaves a false high behind. Moderna's August 19 session was checked against the trial announcement and kept.

Prices: split- and dividend-adjusted daily closes, so stock and ETF returns include dividends. The S&P 500 level and its 4.7% are the price index, without dividends. The starting prices agree with our own stored close history.

Dollar contributions: S&P 500 members only (495 with clean prices), estimated from market cap and return, and rounded. Market caps for some foreign listings are not reliable enough to use, which is why the dollar figures stop at the S&P 500.

Reasons: taken from company releases and news coverage dated inside the window, each linked. Where we could not find a cause, we left the move without one. A news story names what coincided with a move; it does not prove the move had no other cause.

Highs: "below its high" means below the highest close since October 14, 2024: two years for the October 15 figure, and the 19 months before May 8 for the May 8 figure.

This study describes what prices did. It is not a forecast and not a recommendation to buy or sell anything.