Earlier on August 29, Bob Keiser, Aspire Strategist Portfolios co-chief investment officer and senior market strategist, joined CNBC’s ‘Closing Bell Overtime’ to talk about the impact of a Fed cut on the economy and the state of growth. Keiser suggested that the earnings growth continues to be in large-cap and growth stocks. This is a position that Keiser and his firm have been bullish on for two years. The justification for this strategy is that these segments have been, and continue to be, where the earnings growth resides. When asked if an interest rate cut would change this view, Keiser stated that a cut would definitely help the macro story, but he also noted that the market, as shown by Fed fund rate predictions, is already pricing in an over 80% chance of a September cut and two cuts by the end of this year, suggesting a rate cut won’t move the macro needle that much.

Given the overrepresentation of certain large tech stocks in the S&P 500, Keiser agreed that investors should accept this as the new normal and get used to the fact that the top 10 stocks in the S&P comprise about 40% of the market cap. He provided a fundamental reason for this concentration: the growth slice of the S&P 500 is the only sector this year expected to post four quarters of double-digit earnings growth on top of four quarters of double-digit growth from last year. Furthermore, consensus expectations project another year of four consecutive quarters of double-digit earnings growth for this sector next year, confirming there is a fundamental reason why investors have embraced these stocks and are being rewarded.

That being said, we’re here with a list of the 12 best performing large cap stocks to buy.

Our Methodology

We sifted through the Finviz stock screener to compile a list of the top large-cap stocks that were trading between $10 billion and $200 billion with high year-to-date performances of over 40%. We narrowed down our selection to stocks with the most hedge fund ownership. The stocks are ranked in ascending order of their year-to-date performance. We’ve also added the hedge fund sentiment for each stock, as of Q2 2025.

Note: All data was sourced on September 29. 

Why are we interested in the stocks that hedge funds pile into? The reason is simple: our research has shown that we can outperform the market by imitating the top stock picks of the best hedge funds. Our quarterly newsletter’s strategy selects 14 small-cap and large-cap stocks every quarter and has returned 373.4% since May 2014, beating its benchmark by 218 percentage points (see more details here).

12 Best Performing Large Cap Stocks to Buy

12. Alnylam Pharmaceuticals Inc. (NASDAQ:ALNY)

Market Capitalization as of September 29: $58.66 billion

Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 58

Year-to-Date Performance as of September 29: 90.17%

Alnylam Pharmaceuticals Inc. (NASDAQ:ALNY) is one of the best performing large cap stocks to buy. On September 29, Alnylam Pharmaceuticals announced new data analyses from the HELIOS-B Phase 3 study of its RNAi therapeutic, called AMVUTTRA (vutrisiran), presented at the Heart Failure Society of America/HFSA Annual Scientific Meeting 2025.

The findings showed a reduction in gastrointestinal/GI events, which is a multisystem manifestation of transthyretin-mediated amyloidosis cardiomyopathy/ATTR-CM. Compared to placebo, treatment with vutrisiran led to a 42% lower rate of GI events in the overall population, a 37% lower rate in the vutrisiran monotherapy group, and a 49% lower rate in the group treated with tafamidis at baseline.

Importantly, individual symptoms like diarrhea, nausea, and vomiting saw reductions of greater than 50% across all three groups, with the lower rate of GI events observed as early as three months into treatment. Vutrisiran is an RNAi therapeutic that achieves rapid knockdown of transthyretin/TTR, approved for treating the cardiomyopathy of wild-type or hereditary ATTR-CM and the polyneuropathy of hereditary ATTR-PN in adults.

Alnylam Pharmaceuticals Inc. (NASDAQ:ALNY) is a biotech company that discovers, develops, and commercializes therapeutics based on ribonucleic acid interference.

11. Lumentum Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ:LITE)

Market Capitalization as of September 29: $11.36 billion

Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 59

Year-to-Date Performance as of September 29: 93.66%

Lumentum Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ:LITE) is one of the best performing large cap stocks to buy. On September 24, Lumentum Holdings announced the expansion of its Optical Circuit Switch/OCS product line with the new R64 platform, designed for AI data centers. The R64 is an OCS based on Lumentum’s proven MEMS technology and will initially launch as a 64×64-port product to serve lower-port-count applications.

Lumentum is scheduled to feature the new product at the ECOC exhibition in Copenhagen, Denmark, which will take place from September 29 to October 1. The R64 complements the company’s existing high-port count R300 OCS 300×300 port product. The R64 uses decades of Lumentum’s in-house engineering expertise in MEMS technology, which is widely used in telecom applications and is supported by a deep patent portfolio and over one trillion field mirror operating hours.

R64 OCS includes very low power consumption, at less than 150 W for a switch carrying over 100 Tbps of optical traffic, and offers an 80% power reduction compared to packet-based switches. It provides exceptional optical performance due to MEMS technology, which avoids active mediums, resulting in low insertion loss and almost no polarization dependence. The platform offers flexible optical design, allowing scaling to 72×72 ports, uni- or bi-directional operation, and full any-to-any fiber connectivity.

Lumentum Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ:LITE) manufactures and sells optical and photonic products internationally. It operates through two segments: Cloud & Networking and Industrial Tech.