The stock market closed 2024 on a high note, delivering robust gains across major indices as investors weighed the resilience of large-cap equities. The S&P 500 advanced meaningfully, underscoring a year of strong broad-market momentum even as volatility remained a steady companion. In this analysis, we revisit the year’s performance, dissect the stocks that led on a technical strength basis, and lay out practical steps for using scanning tools to position for 2025. While the Santa Claus Rally often sparks expectations of a late-year surge, this year’s narrative also highlighted the importance of technical strength indicators and disciplined stock selection. With the S&P 500 finishing with a gain of 23.31% for the year, investors had ample reasons to toast a successful close to 2024 while staying mindful of the conditions that could drive further upside or pose renewed risks into the new year.
Big Year in Review: Market Performance, Leaders, and the Role of Technical Strength
The calendar year 2024 delivered a surprisingly robust performance for the U.S. stock market, with the S&P 500 posting a solid gain that surpassed a key psychological threshold. Investors were recognizing the resilience of a broad set of U.S. equities even as macro headwinds persisted in various forms. In this environment, the top-weighted components of the S&P 500 captured most of the attention, reinforcing the market’s tendency to tilt toward the leadership shown by the largest holdings within the index. It was a year where select names not only outperformed on a price basis but also demonstrated extraordinary strength from a technical standpoint, signaling the possibility of continued momentum into 2025 if those signals persisted.
Among the most notable observations was the performance hierarchy within the broader S&P 500 community. The year’s strongest performers, measured strictly by raw price appreciation, included Palantir Technologies (PLTR), Vistra Corp (VST), and NVIDIA (NVDA). These three stocks topped the year’s performance table, underscoring how a mixture of technology-focused growth names (PLTR and NVDA) and a utility/energy-related player (VST) could contribute outsized gains within a diversified index. This trio’s standout performance highlighted the different drivers that can contribute to a successful year for stockholders, from disruptive software platforms to integrated energy solutions and beyond. While performance metrics provide a powerful snapshot of one dimension of success, investors and analysts often look to other measures—such as technical strength, momentum, and relative positioning—to gauge quality and durability of the rally.
Beyond raw performance, there is a broader lesson about how strength can serve as a complementary lens for stock selection. Strength, as quantified by technical ranking metrics and momentum indicators, offers an additional layer of insight into which stocks are best positioned to sustain gains. As the year drew to a close, the market’s attention began turning toward which S&P 500 constituents ended the period with the strongest technical footing. In parallel, a well-rounded analysis emphasizes not only where stocks have landed in terms of returns, but how their charts show resilience, trend consistency, and the likelihood of continued upside or potential risk of a correction. This dual framework—combining performance with technical strength—can be a powerful approach for identifying candidates worth watching into 2025.
Within StockCharts’ Sample Scan Library, the S&P 500 Stocks group under Predefined Groups offers a structured way to interrogate broad-market performance through a technical lens. Sorting the results by the StockCharts Technical Rank (SCTR) from highest to lowest provides a direct view into which stocks demonstrated the strongest technical setup as the year ended. Notably, when this sorting was applied to the S&P 500 Stocks, Palantir Technologies (PLTR) emerged as the top-ranked stock by SCTR, followed by United Airlines Holdings Inc. (UAL) and then Tesla, Inc. (TSLA). This ranking—PLTR, UAL, TSLA—highlights how the strength metric can diverge from raw performance, underscoring the value of combining different analytical dimensions to inform actionable decisions for 2025.
In the scope of performance metrics, the year’s highlights were clear: PLTR, VST, and NVDA stood out as the top performers in absolute return terms. The strength-based ranking, however, told a different story, placing PLTR at the apex of technical strength, with UAL and TSLA trailing closely in terms of SCTR positioning. These distinctions matter to traders and investors because they reflect not just past gains but the market’s perception of ongoing momentum and the probability that those momentum trends can persist. The takeaway is straightforward: a stock can deliver large gains in a year while its technical strength signals a potential for more upside if the trajectory remains intact; conversely, a stock with strong performance but waning technical strength might warrant more cautious positioning.
From a practical perspective, market participants who want to capitalize on these insights should consider building a watchlist or ChartList that tracks both performance and strength signals. Doing so helps ensure that investments aligned with both measures can be identified and monitored with ease. As 2025 approaches, the emphasis on technical strength remains a valuable compass to complement traditional return tracking, enabling more informed decision-making in the face of evolving market conditions.
The broader implication for investors is clear: while the calendar-year gains were meaningful, the real opportunity lies in understanding the interplay between performance and strength and using that interplay to inform timing and risk management strategies. The market’s experience in 2024 demonstrates that sustained gains often accompany strong technical footing, and that stocks delivering both attributes can form the foundation of a well-constructed portfolio for the new year. As you prepare for 2025, integrating performance data with robust technical analysis can help refine entry points, target levels, and trailing-stop strategies, while reducing the exposure to sudden reversals that may occur in less technically robust names.
In the sections that follow, we will drill down into the specific stocks that anchored the year’s gains, examine their positions in both performance and SCTR strength, and outline practical steps for leveraging scanning tools to identify high-quality candidates as you build or rebalance portfolios in 2025. The goal is to provide a clear, actionable framework that aligns with the realities of a market that rewarded both momentum and technical discipline in 2024 and is likely to demand even more nuance in the year ahead.
Understanding SCTR and Stock Scans: How to Filter for Strength in 2025
To navigate the stock universe effectively, it helps to ground the discussion in the core tools used by technical traders to identify sustained strength. The StockCharts Technical Rank, or SCTR, is a composite metric that blends various technical indicators to quantify a stock’s relative strength within a defined universe, such as the S&P 500. A high SCTR score represents a robust technical footing, which can be interpreted as a higher probability that a stock will continue to exhibit uptrends or maintain momentum. SCTR’s appeal lies in its ability to summarize complex chart dynamics into a single, comparable number—enabling traders to rank stocks quickly and systematically.
The concept of strength is complementary to raw performance. A stock might deliver outsized gains in a given year, yet it may have exhausted its immediate upside or show signs of waning momentum. Conversely, a stock with moderate performance can display strong technical strength, implying a favorable setup for forthcoming gains if trends persist. For 2025, traders and investors can benefit from a disciplined approach that combines performance awareness with a focus on technical strength, using SCTR as a primary yardstick to scan and sort the market.
StockCharts provides a practical workflow for deploying these insights. Within its platform, you can access the Sample Scan Library—a curated collection of pre-built scans designed to help users filter the market without requiring programming or coding expertise. The library includes a variety of scans tailored to different universes and criteria, including the S&P 500 Stocks. By selecting that predefined group and sorting the results by SCTR from highest to lowest, you bring into view the most technically robust stocks at a given moment. This approach makes it straightforward to identify candidates with the strongest pull and to track them in real time as new price action unfolds.
For 2025, the emphasis on ease of use remains a compelling reason to lean on these built-in scans. The advantage of a ready-made scanning framework is twofold: first, it eliminates the barrier of needing to write custom code to filter stocks by a complex mix of indicators; second, it facilitates ongoing monitoring by allowing users to maintain dynamic watchlists or ChartLists that reflect the evolving market environment. The combination of a robust scanning toolkit and a live, up-to-date ranking system creates a practical pathway to maintaining a stock universe that reflects both performance history and current momentum.
In practical terms, here is how you can apply these concepts to your 2025 investment workflow:
- Build a watchlist that includes the top performers by performance (PLTR, VST, NVDA) to understand who led the year and assess whether those gains are supported by ongoing strength.
- Create a separate watchlist focused on SCTR strength (PLTR, UAL, TSLA) to understand who exhibits the strongest technical footing as 2025 begins.
- Use the Sample Scan Library’s predefined scans for S&P 500 stocks to quickly filter by SCTR, then sort by the SCTR score to identify the strongest entries.
- Add the strongest strength stocks to ChartLists and monitor their price action relative to key moving averages, particularly the 50-day SMA, to gauge trend continuity and potential entry points.
- Regularly compare performance and strength between candidate stocks to spot divergences that may warrant closer evaluation or a more nuanced position-sizing approach.
A practical takeaway is that scanning and chart-based strength analysis are powerful tools that can be deployed without heavy technical setup. For 2025, the ability to filter, rank, and monitor stocks by SCTR and related momentum signals provides a disciplined framework for capitalizing on the continued potential of long-run uptrends while managing the risk of drawdowns. The next sections illustrate how this framework applied to individual leaders from 2024 can inform ongoing evaluation and decision-making as the new year unfolds.
Palantir Technologies (PLTR): A Ride to the Top
Palantir Technologies, a company that entered the public markets in 2020 amid intense media attention and volatility, has charted a volatile course through its first few years as a public company. The narrative around PLTR shifted markedly in 2022 when the stock entered a pronounced slump, and that period left a lasting impression on many investors regarding the stock’s risk profile and potential. Yet, after a difficult stretch in 2022, 2023 marked the initial signs of a rebound, and by 2024 PLTR had established a clear technical path toward the top of both performance and strength metrics within the market’s landscape. The stock’s journey through those years highlights how a once-volatile momentum name can transition into a durable performer when catalysts align with favorable technical setups.
In terms of the year’s technical strength, PLTR demonstrated sustained leadership starting in early June 2024, when the stock’s SCTR score rose to and remained above a high threshold. Specifically, PLTR maintained a SCTR score above 76 from early June 2024 onward—a strong indication of consistent bullish dynamics and a robust relative-position signal within its sector and broader market context. The price action corroborated this strength, with the stock maintaining a position above its 50-day simple moving average (SMA) for the vast majority of the period. A notable exception occurred in August, when PLTR briefly dipped below the 50-day SMA for two trading days, a small blip in what otherwise was an uptrend. The occurrence did not derail the overall trend, which remained intact as the stock continued to trend higher for the rest of the year.
The result of this technical strength and uptrend resilience culminated in PLTR finishing the year with a remarkable 340.59% gain. That level of appreciation is exceptional in any market context and underscores PLTR’s ability to convert a favorable setup into substantial price appreciation when market conditions align with its underlying narrative and technical trajectory. The SCTR score for PLTR at year-end stood at an impressive 99.7, signaling near-peak strength within the instrument’s universe. This combination of outsized price gains and exceptionally high SCTR emphasizes PLTR as a leading example of how a stock can evolve into a dominant strength beacon, particularly when the market environment supports continued upside momentum.
From a practical perspective, the PLTR narrative highlights several important implications for investors seeking to incorporate strength-based signals into their 2025 strategy:
- A high SCTR score, such as 99.7, can be a strong confirmatory signal when price remains above the 50-day SMA, reinforcing the likelihood of continued uptrends.
- The durability of the move, evidenced by a sustained period above the moving average with a strong upshoot, provides a favorable framework for cautious entries on pullbacks with the potential for follow-through.
- The stock’s performance trajectory demonstrates how a stock can transition from a volatile, high-volatility profile to a more predictable strength dynamic, provided that the chart remains favorable and volume supports the trend.
As a result, PLTR’s story in 2024 offers a template for how to identify strength leaders through SCTR and moving-average analysis and how to translate those signals into actionable positioning ideas for 2025. Investors who want to emulate this approach should consider adding PLTR to their strength-focused watchlists and ChartLists and monitor for pullbacks that align with continuation patterns, as well as for any signs of exhaustion or distribution that might precede a reversal. The overarching takeaway is that PLTR’s path to the top in 2024 demonstrates how a stock can sustain high strength readings when the price action confirms the signal via breakout dynamics, consistent SCTR momentum, and price above key trend lines.
United Airlines Holdings (UAL): A Fast-Rising Leader in 2024
Among the top performers in the S&P 500 in 2024, United Airlines Holdings (UAL) stood out in a sector that experienced a strong recovery of demand as travel gradually returned to pre-crisis norms. The airline sector’s rebound was underpinned by a return of consumer confidence and a normalization of travel behavior in the wake of earlier disruptions. UAL’s stock performance reflected these broader tailwinds, as the equity climbed substantially through the year, moving from a period of relative consolidation into a decisive uptrend.
Starting in mid-September 2024, UAL’s stock exhibited significant momentum, breaking above its 50-day SMA and maintaining that elevated stance for the remainder of the year. This price action alignment—price trading above the moving average in a rising market—helped reinforce the bullish narrative around UAL and reinforced traders’ confidence in the stock’s continued strength. The chart narrative for UAL shows a steep ascent from that mid-September point onward, with a clear commitment to higher highs and a sustained uptrend that captured the attention of momentum-focused investors.
The SCTR score supports the thematic strength observed in the price action. Since September 16, 2024, UAL’s SCTR score remained above 76, indicating that the stock retained a robust technical profile and continued to rank highly within the S&P 500 stocks in terms of relative strength. At year-end, UAL boasted a SCTR score of 99.1, underscoring a very strong technical outlook and a favorable position relative to most peers. In terms of absolute performance, UAL rose by 134.34% in 2024, a gain that placed it among the top-performing names in the S&P 500. The combination of price strength, structural momentum, and a high SCTR score framed UAL as a standout example of how the airline sector benefited from the market environment and how technical strength can align with strong fundamental narratives.
The implications for 2025 are straightforward but nuanced. For investors who track strength-based criteria, UAL offers a near-ideal blueprint: a stock that has demonstrated a durable uptrend, a high SCTR, and a price structure that suggests room to run on favorable macro and company-specific catalysts. However, it is equally important to monitor for signs of fatigue, a shift in volume dynamics, or a retreat in price that could precede a consolidation or pullback. The prudent approach is to maintain consideration of UAL within a strategic watchlist, ready to act if price retracements present the opportunity to re-enter with a favorable risk-reward profile. As with PLTR, UAL’s year-end technical standing provides a framework for thinking about how to approach strength in 2025: focus on stocks exhibiting both high SCTR scores and price action that confirms the strength signal, while staying adaptable to changes in market conditions that could alter the trajectory.
From a portfolio-management perspective, UAL’s 2024 performance reinforces the value of monitoring sector-specific dynamics and how they interact with broad-market strength. It also illustrates how a well-timed entry, guided by a combination of technical indicators and momentum signals, can offer an advantageous path for investors who practice disciplined risk management. In addition to watching UAL directly, traders may find it informative to analyze its performance relative to other high-visibility momentum leaders in the travel and leisure space, as well as to benchmark indices that track the performance of the transportation ecosystem. The key takeaway is that UAL’s ascent in 2024 serves as a practical case study in leveraging SCTR-guided strength alongside price-confirmation signals in the quest to identify high-probability setup candidates for 2025.
Tesla, Inc. (TSLA): The Stock’s Last Quarter Resilience and Strength
Tesla, Inc. (TSLA) has long been a focal point for investors and traders due to its high profile and the volatility that often accompanies its price action. The stock’s journey through 2024 exemplified both the challenges and the opportunities that characterize highly traded growth names. The price action toward the end of 2024 demonstrated a marked resilience, with the stock showing continued upward movement in the closing months of the year.
In terms of performance, TSLA delivered a solid gain for the year, with the stock price rising by 62.52% in 2024. This performance placed TSLA among the noteworthy gainers within the S&P 500 cohort, reflecting an environment in which investors rewarded momentum and high-growth narratives. On the technical front, TSLA maintained a high level of strength: the stock’s SCTR score ended the year at 98.4, highlighting its robust technical footprint and its standing among the strongest stocks in the market by that metric. The stock also demonstrated favorable price action, notably maintaining its position above its 50-day SMA since the end of October 2024, which reinforced the bullish context around the stock’s ongoing uptrend.
This combination of price strength, supportive moving-average positioning, and a high SCTR score points to a trajectory that traders might expect to persist into 2025, assuming current momentum remains intact. It is important for investors to monitor for any signs of weakness or distribution that could precede a reversal, such as deteriorating volume patterns or a breach of key support levels. However, as 2024 closed, TSLA’s technical profile remained among the most compelling within the S&P 500 universe, underscoring how a high-SCTR stock with a strong recent performance history can form a core part of a momentum-oriented strategy in the new year.
For those looking to understand the practical implications of TSLA’s 2024 profile, several takeaways emerge. First, the combination of a high SCTR score and a price staying above the 50-day SMA is a potent indicator of ongoing relative strength and trend persistence. Second, the stock’s ability to continue climbing even after experiencing a volatile period in prior years suggests that the market’s perception of its long-term trajectory can remain favorable when price action and momentum align. Finally, TSLA’s example demonstrates the value of aligning performance data with technical strength metrics to form a more complete view of a stock’s potential in a given year.
As you incorporate TSLA into your 2025 framework, consider how its price behavior aligns with your risk tolerance and time horizon. For traders inclined toward trend-following strategies, TSLA’s 2024 blueprint offers a framework for identifying pullback entries that can offer compelling risk-reward profiles if the stock resumes its uptrend with conviction. For longer-term investors, the high SCTR score and sustained price strength can provide confidence in a position held through potential volatility, provided that risk controls are in place to manage exposure.
Performance Leaders vs. Strength Leaders: Distinct Narratives in 2024
A nuanced takeaway from the year’s performance is the distinction between leadership by absolute return and leadership by technical strength. The market’s best-returning names—PLTR, VST, and NVDA—demonstrated strong performance through 2024, reinforcing that high returns and continued upside can manifest in diverse sectors and business models. Yet, when sorting stocks by SCTR, Palantir Technologies (PLTR) rose to the top, followed by United Airlines Holdings (UAL) and Tesla (TSLA). This disconnect underscores the fact that raw returns and technical strength can tell different stories about a stock’s current footing and likely near-term direction.
For investors, this dichotomy offers a practical framework for portfolio construction and risk management. High-performing stocks can propel a portfolio’s overall gains, but those gains are not guaranteed to carry forward in the same form into the next year. On the other hand, strength-advantaged stocks—those with elevated SCTR scores—offer a different type of potential, anchored in chart-based momentum and setup quality. They may provide more reliable continuation signals in the near term, even if their annual return for 2024 isn’t as dramatic as the top performers.
As a result, a well-balanced approach for 2025 might involve maintaining exposure to both themes: carry positions in the performance leaders for diversification and growth potential, while actively monitoring strength leaders to capture continued momentum on favorable pullbacks or entries on consolidations. In practical terms, this means ensuring your watchlists and ChartLists reflect both performance and strength—an approach that helps you identify the stocks most likely to sustain momentum and to locate new entrants who demonstrate robust technical footing.
Practical Scanning for 2025: Using Sample Scan Library and SCTR
Scanning for stocks with high SCTR scores is a straightforward, repeatable process that can be implemented with minimal coding or customization, thanks to the built-in resources available in advanced charting platforms. In StockCharts, the Sample Scan Library provides ready-to-use scans designed to filter stocks that meet specific technical criteria, including those within the S&P 500 universe. The core advantage of this approach is that it democratizes access to sophisticated screening capabilities, enabling traders and investors to apply robust, evidence-based filters without needing a programming background.
To apply this for 2025, start by selecting the S&P 500 Stocks group under Predefined Groups. Then sort the results by the StockCharts Technical Rank (SCTR) from highest to lowest. This simple step yields a prioritized list of the strongest names by technical strength, giving you quick visibility into which stocks exhibit the most favorable momentum signals at a given moment. The practical outcome is a curated set of candidates you can add to ChartLists, allowing you to monitor performance and strength in real time and adjust exposure as needed based on evolving market conditions.
The beauty of the built-in scans lies in their timeliness and accessibility. You don’t need to be a coding expert to leverage them; the scans come pre-configured, and you can quickly adapt them to your preferred universe, time frame, or other criteria. For 2025, the scans can be a central component of your routine for identifying high-qualtiy candidates with strong technical footing, while also offering the flexibility to refine filters as you gain experience with how signals behave in different market regimes. As you build your 2025 workflow, consider adopting a habit of checking high-SCTR stocks on a regular cadence—daily or weekly—then cross-referencing with price action, moving-average tests, and volume patterns to confirm entry or exit decisions.
In addition to the direct use of SCTR-based scans, it is valuable to complement your scanning activity with a disciplined process for managing watchlists and alerts. For example, you may want to maintain a dedicated ChartList for the strongest players (as identified by SCTR) and another for the latest performance leaders, to preserve clarity in your decision-making. This approach helps prevent information overload and allows you to focus on a manageable subset of the market that aligns with your strategic objectives.
Finally, remember that while scanning and strength analytics are powerful tools, they should be integrated into a broader framework that includes risk management, position sizing, and explicit entry/exit criteria. The objective is to use the signals as a guide rather than a guarantee, and to ensure that each decision is anchored in a well-defined plan that suits your risk tolerance and investment horizon.
Disclaimer: This article is for educational purposes only and should not be construed as financial advice. The ideas and strategies described herein should never be used without first assessing your own personal and financial situation or without consulting a financial professional. Good luck as you navigate 2025 with a disciplined, data-informed approach.
Conclusion
The year 2024 demonstrated how a combination of strong performance and compelling technical strength can coexist within the stock market, yielding meaningful opportunities for investors who embrace a disciplined approach. The S&P 500’s 23.31% annual gain set a positive backdrop for continued attention to the quality of leadership, particularly among the stocks that finished the year with the strongest technical footing. Palantir Technologies, United Airlines Holdings, and Tesla emerged as leading names by the SCTR ranking, offering a clear case study in the value of combining strength signals with price action. Meanwhile, Palantir, Vistra, and NVIDIA dominated the performance rankings for the year, illustrating how diverse sectors—ranging from technology services to energy-related utilities and semiconductor leadership—can drive outsized gains in a single calendar year.
As 2025 approaches, investors are encouraged to leverage the StockCharts framework to identify high-SCTR candidates, monitor for sustaining price action above meaningful moving averages like the 50-day SMA, and reassess positions when momentum shows signs of waning. The practical workflow—utilizing the Sample Scan Library, sorting by SCTR, and maintaining ChartLists—offers a clear, repeatable path to capture ongoing strength while remaining attuned to shifts in market conditions. A strategic plan for 2025 should integrate these tools with robust risk controls, thoughtful position sizing, and a disciplined review routine to identify replacements or add new strong names as the market evolves.
In closing, the combination of performance leadership and strength leadership observed in 2024 can inform more effective investing in 2025. By tracking both the actual returns and the technical footprints of leading stocks, investors can better navigate a potentially dynamic year, positioning themselves to participate in continued upside while maintaining flexibility to adapt to new market realities.