Tech Giants Largely Rally Through Another Pandemic Year

This article is published in collaboration with Statista

by Felix Richter

As 2021 turned out to be another year shaped by the Covid-19 pandemic, the world’s largest and most valuable tech companies continued to show remarkable resiliency against the global crisis.

After big tech stocks outperformed the overall market by a huge margin in 2020, the tech rally continued for large parts of 2021, with one notable exception: Amazon, one of the biggest winners of 2020, underperformed last year, as the e-commerce giant failed to keep up the growth rates it posted in 2020. In the year that saw stay-at-home orders and store closures accelerate the shift to online shopping across the globe, Amazon’s sales had jumped by nearly 40 percent to $386 billion – a feat that was always going to be hard to replicate.

As the following chart shows, Alphabet’s shareholders had the most reason to smile in 2021, as the company’s share price climbed 65 percent over the past twelve months. Microsoft also posted a 51-percent gain in 2021, while Apple’s 34-percent gain looks almost disappointing measured against the 81-percent surge the world’s first 3-trillion-dollar company saw in 2020.

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