UNITED STATES—San Francisco’s biggest publicly traded companies are enjoying particularly strong buoyancy in the stock market, helping the US enjoy its second longest collective winning streak since 1929. Between April and September, the S&P 500 rose for six straight months. That’s almost unheard of since 1929, occurring only six times in the last 89 years. When this has happened in the past, the market has continued to enjoy strong gains in the fourth quarter.
The San Francisco Bay Area’s top performers, predominantly in the technology and internet-centric industries, are boosting innovation in the sector, complementing their own commercial strength and underlining why strategists are optimistic that the current bull run will continue (even if no one is yet predicting it will surpass the 4,494-day streak between October 1987 and March 2000).
Los Gatos-based Netflix is, unsurprisingly, a top performer in the area. Since March 2009, it has enjoyed a 6,045 percent advance. Second is Align Technology, a 3D digital scanner manufacturer which has seen a 5,549 percent spike, while Glu Mobile (boosted by the popularity of its Kim Kardashian game), Nektar Therapeutics and Salesforce, have all witnessed huge gains.
Contrary to wider concerns about innovation across the US – increasing at a relatively slow pace since the 1970s – San Francisco has defiantly bucked the trend. A study published in 2016 saw the Bay area’s performance driven by high-tech information and communication technology companies, something Berkeley professor AnnaLee Saxenian attributes to the region’s capacity to “redefine and remake” itself by developing innovation in cutting-edge new industries.
The prominence of San Francisco’s buoyant economy has understandably made it one of the world’s hotspots for venture capital investment. The region accounts for nearly half of such investment in US high-tech start-ups and over a quarter when compared to the rest of the world. This has also led to increased interest in the stock market from new investors, many of whom realize the potential of CFD trading as a route to market via a leveraged product that allows investors to trade on margin across a variety of industries. This might be even more attractive given that the US stock market, country-wide, has seen success across a range of sectors with real estate and building trades such as Patrick Industries of Elkhart in Indiana, showing particularly strong growth. In fact, Patrick Industries boasts a 40,000 percent stock gain since the current bull run started. That’s a 16 cents per share rise.
Other successes include Nexstar Media (a TV station operator), mattress manufacturer Sleep Number, and MGP Ingredients which makes distilled spirits. Retailer Natural Health Trends, which sells beauty products, also rose dramatically.
The current bull market would have to run until 2021 to surpass the 1987 to 2000 all-time record, but analysts are optimistic there’s no sign of slowdown currently. Indeed, since 1928, the market has risen from April to July 12 times – and in each of those years, stocks have finished higher by year’s end. The average gain in those years was 1.8 percent
