We recently published a list of 10 Hottest Large-Cap Stocks So Far in 2025. In this article, we are going to take a look at where Vistra Corp. (NYSE:VST) stands against other hottest large-cap stocks so far in 2025.
The stock market as a whole hasn’t had a great start to the year, but there have been some outliers. Focusing on these outliers might pay off in the long run and the statistics behind it — especially this month — are very important. The S&P 500’s calendar year performance has matched the direction of January returns approximately 77% of the time. This means when January shows positive returns, the market finishes higher in 84% of these years with an average annual return of 15.5% for the whole year.
Even if January is negative, the market ends higher some 63% of the time, but with a return of around 2.2%. I’m bringing this up because I believe this correlation can also extend to certain stocks. We’ve seen many mega-cap tech stocks perform well last year after a solid January. A lot of big-cap stocks between $50 billion to $100 billion also performed well.
Accordingly, the methodology for this article involves me screening the top 10 stocks traded in U.S. markets with a market capitalization between $50 billion to $100 billion and then sorted by year-to-date performance.
Solar panel workers installing a new farm for clean energy generation.
Vistra Corp. (NYSE:VST)
- YTD Performance: 14%
Vistra Corp. (NYSE:VST) has been on an even more bullish trajectory in the past year. It has gained 333.6% in the past year and YTD performance hasn’t disappointed either.
Vistra (NYSE:VST) is a power company that generates electricity and sells it to customers in states like Texas and Illinois. The more recent buzz around it has been centered on beating expectations and boosting guidance. They beat both revenue and EPS expectations in Q3, with revenue up almost 54% year-over-year and EPS up 276.1%.
I’ve noticed plenty of bullish chatter among investors who believe nuclear and renewable expansions position the firm to ride the wave of AI-related data center demand. However, some are now worried the stock is running too hot.
Here’s what Jim Cramer said: “Right now, there are two utilities that generate a lot of nuclear power, Vistra and Constellation Energy, the latter of which just got a big contract with the feds, $1 billion, to expand a nuclear site. The big utilities are frantically trying to meet power demand generated by the data center revolution. I think these two stocks are now way ahead of themselves.“
I partially agree with Jim here. The downside risk is quite bad if things don’t turn out well, but as he himself says, there’s a huge amount of power demand. I don’t see VST stock going down too much unless we see that demand start to cool.
Overall, VST ranks 3rd on our list of hottest large-cap stocks so far in 2025. While we acknowledge the potential of VST as an investment, our conviction lies in the belief that some AI stocks hold greater promise for delivering higher returns and doing so within a shorter time frame. If you are looking for an AI stock that is more promising than VST but that trades at less than 5 times its earnings, check out our report about the cheapest AI stock.
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Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.
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