Few Stocks at 52-Week Highs, Even as Market Hits Records

Key Takeaways

• The US Large-Mid Index hit an all-time high in October, but the median stock in the index is trading 15% below its 52-week high.
• Nine of the 10 largest stocks are up within 10% of their 52-week highs, and all are technology and communications giants.
• 76% of utilities stocks are trading near their 52-week highs, versus just 21% of real estate stocks.
• High concentration creates risks for investors. If the biggest names stumble, broad market indexes will be brought down with them.

Want to see how much of a market of haves and have-nots it’s been? Look at the kinds of stocks trading near their 52-week highs. The Morningstar US Large-Mid Index, which tracks the performance of the top 90% of the US investable universe by market cap, hit an all-time high on Oct. 28 before easing slightly into November. The index now sits 0.9% below that peak.

Even as the stock market soars to new heights, the gains are increasingly driven by fewer names while the rest of the market gets left in the dust. In October, the Large-Mid Index climbed 2.3%, and 1.8 of those points—78% of the total gains—came from just three mega-cap technology companies: Nvidia NVDA, Alphabet GOOGL/GOOG, and Apple AAPL. All three hit 52-week highs on Oct. 27 or 28. In contrast, the median stock in the index was still trading 12% below its peak.

Where Are Stocks Trading Relative to Their 52-Week Highs?

One measure of the composition of a stock market rally is the number of stocks hitting their 52-week highs. The more stocks that are at fresh highs, the broader the rally. But this rally is narrow. In October 2025, only 28% of stocks in the Large-Mid Index hit a 52-week high. In November 2024, amid the post-election rally, 53% had hit such highs.

Investors can also look at how far the median stock is trading below its 52-week high. A larger gap between the median stock’s current price and its 52-week high indicates that fewer stocks are contributing to the rally. As of Nov. 10, the median stock in the Large-Mid Index was trading 14.5% below its 52-week high. While that’s better than the five-year average of 17.2% below, it’s weaker than in November 2024, when the median stock traded just 4.5% below its 52-week high.

The Largest Stocks Are Driving Market Gains

Looking under the hood of the Large-Mid Index, nine of the top 10 constituents are trading within 10% of their 52-week highs. The lone outlier, Meta Platforms META, sits 21% below its peak. Six of these top 10 holdings—Nvidia, Apple, Microsoft MSFT, Broadcom AVGO, and both Alphabet share classes—hit fresh highs in the past two weeks.

Half of all large-cap stocks within the Large-Mid Index sit within 10% of their 52-week highs, while 40% of mid caps and only 8% of small caps are within 10% of their highs.

52-Week Highs and Lows by Sector

Breaking down the Large-Mid Index by sector, utilities stand out, with 76% of stocks trading within 10% of their highs. Utility stocks have soared over the past two years, driven by surging data center energy demand from the AI boom.

The extent of the market concentration can be seen most clearly through the tech sector. Just 36% of tech stocks are within 10% of their 52-week highs, even as the sector drove most of the recent market gains. The Morningstar US Technology Index sits 3.1% below its 52-week high, while the median stock in the index trades 18.1% below its peak. That’s a 15% gap, the largest of any sector.

On the flip side, real estate and consumer defensive stocks stand out as the most challenged sectors. Over half of the stocks in each sector sit within 10% of their 52-week lows. Inflationary pressures and evolving trade policies have dampened consumer defensives, while rising interest rates are largely behind real estate’s underperformance.

Just How Narrow Is the Rally?

Over the past four quarters, the technology sector—representing 35% of the Large-Mid Index by weight—has accounted for more than half of the gains and losses. In the third quarter, technology stocks contributed 4.1 percentage points to the index’s 8.2-percentage-point rise, meaning half of all gains came from a single sector. In the second quarter, tech added 7.0 of the 11.4 points gained (roughly 60%). In the first quarter, tech names sunk the market, contributing 3.9 of the 4.7 total percentage points lost by the index. Both the Technology Index and the Large-Mid Index hit 52-week lows on April 8, amid tariff announcements.

The concentration is also apparent when looking at the returns of individual stocks in the Large-Mid Index. Among the 10 largest AI-related names, the median stock is up 35% in 2025. Looking at the other 555 stocks in the index, the median is up only 6% this year.

Extreme Market Concentration Poses Risks for Investors

On a recent episode of Morningstar’s Investing Insights podcast, chief multi-asset strategist for Morningstar Wealth Dominic Pappalardo noted that the current market concentration is historically outsized. The 10 largest companies in the S&P 500 account for 40% of the index, compared with the previous historical high of 25%.

“Frankly, there are no signs of [the high market concentration] dissipating anytime soon,” he says. “Even though we are at 40% today, there’s a reasonable chance it continues to go higher from here. The two things Pappalardo says could cause the concentration to dissipate are time and technological advancement: “As time goes by, the largest companies tend to evolve, whether that’s from smaller companies growing and taking a new spot in the top 10 or companies shrinking and dropping out of the top 10.”

Such heavy concentration in a few stocks means that if those names stumble, broad market indexes are likely to follow. “The concern would be if the market tone shifts and technology stocks start to lag the broader market, investors will experience an outsize downturn as well,” Pappalardo says. “That’s probably something people should be thinking about. I would suspect a lot of investors aren’t aware of how concentrated those investments are right now.”

To combat concentration risk, Pappalardo recommends that investors add small-cap and international stocks to their portfolios, diversifying away from the mega-cap names that dominate broad US market indexes.