🏆 The Best Stocks Of 2023

1) Best Stocks Of 2023 2) Most Active Congressional Traders, 3) Short Sellers Hit Hard, and more!

Author

Carbon Finance
January 05, 2024

Happy New Year!

Welcome to the +656 subscribers that have joined us since the last issue in 2023.

It’s the first Friday of 2024! I extend my wishes to all of you for a year filled with remarkable achievements and significant milestones.

Some key data bites from this week that you should know: 

  • Fidelity has further devalued its shares in X Holdings, now seeing it as 71.5% less valuable since Elon Musk's purchase.

  • U.S. bankruptcy filings increased by 18% in 2023 due to higher interest rates and the end of pandemic-era support.

  • The U.S. national debt surpassed $34T.

  • TikTok aims to expand its U.S. TikTok Shop business to $17.5B in 2024.

  • Mark Zuckerberg sold nearly $428M of Meta $META in the last two months of 2023.

In today’s newsletter:

  • 📈 Best Stocks Of 2023

  • 💸 Most Active Congressional Traders

  • 🩸 Short Sellers Have Been Hit Hard

Let’s dive right in!

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📈 Best Stocks Of 2023

Now that 2023 has closed out, let’s take a look at the top 10 best performing large-cap (+$10B market cap) stocks for the year.

In first place is Affirm.

The company’s stock surged +400% in 2023 largely due to expanded partnerships and high buy-now pay-later usage.

Following Affirm is Coinbase in second and MicroStrategy in third.

Both companies returned over +300% thanks to Bitcoin’s tremendous rally and positive regulatory changes around crypto in 2023.

The SEC has until January 10th to approve or reject applications from major asset managers to launch a Bitcoin ETF.

One notable call out from the list is Nvidia, which was the best performing stock in the S&P 500.

The company largely benefited from the rising demand for AI chips and positioned itself as the face of the AI revolution.

Collectively, all of these companies significantly outpaced the S&P 500’s 24% return for the year.

💸 Most Active Congressional Traders

It’s a tale as old as time.

Congress members trading stocks raises ethical concerns due to potential conflicts of interest with their legislative duties.

Recently, the debate has intensified over whether stricter regulations or a complete ban on such trades should be implemented.

Last year, there was an increasingly larger amount of bipartisan legislation proposals banning stock trades for U.S. Congress members, top officials, and relatives.

And looking at key metrics, we can see why.

Data from Quiver Quant showed that in the last year, several congress members have traded millions of dollars worth of volume.

Congress member Josh Gottheimer alone traded an estimated $92.6M.

The question many of us are likely asking is, will this ever change?

🩸Short Sellers Have Been Hit Hard

In 2023, short sellers on Wall Street lost about $178B in total, with key losses stemming from the Magnificent Seven stocks.

The hype around AI also led to over 100% gains in stocks like Nvidia, Tesla, and Meta.

Dovish statements from the Fed in Q4 also added fuel to the fire, with a broader rally across small and mid-cap companies causing additional losses for short sellers.

The largest collective losses are from Tesla at -$12.6B, followed by Nvidia at -$11.3B, and Apple at -$7.7B.

🔋 The New King of EV. BYD $BYDDY surpassed Tesla $TSLA to become the global leader in electric vehicle sales - BB

📈 Fed Minutes. Federal officials predict potential interest rate cuts in 2024, but the decision remains uncertain due to varying economic factors - CNBC

💵 Dividend Cut. Walgreens $WBA shares dropped after the company announced a nearly 50% dividend cut - B

🍪 Cookie Limit. Google $GOOG is implementing major changes to online user tracking by limiting cookies in Chrome - WSJ

Major Trades Published 12/29 - 01/04

Buys

  • Globalstar ($GSAT)

    • Insider: James Lynch (Director)

      • # of Shares Purchased: 500,000

      • $ Amount: $963,700

      • SEC Forms: [1]

Sells

  • Walmart ($WMT)

    • Insider: Robson Walton (Director)

      • # of Shares Sold: 2,406,081

      • $ Amount: $379,477,471

      • SEC Forms: [1]

  • Salesforce ($CRM)

    • Insider: Marc Benioff (Chair and CEO)

      • # of Shares Sold: 265,000

      • $ Amount: $69,840,201

      • SEC Forms: [1]

  • MongoDB ($MDB)

    • Insider: Dev Ittycheria (President & CEO)

      • # of Shares Sold: 36,876

      • $ Amount: $14,327,958

      • SEC Forms: [1]

  • Netflix ($NFLX)

    • Insider: Reed Hastings (Executive Chairman)

      • # of Shares Sold: 25,998

      • $ Amount: $12,232,221

      • SEC Forms: [1]

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