Top 5 Nasdaq Stocks for 2018 by Performance

The Nasdaq Composite Index is a popular market capitalization-weighted stock market index. It is comprised of more than 3,300 common equities and similar securities, like ADRs, which are traded on the Nasdaq exchange. Along with the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) and the S&P 500 index, it is one of the three most-followed indexes of the American stock markets. Based on the market cap, the most-valued companies included in the index are Microsoft Corp. (MSFT), Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN), Apple, Inc. (AAPL), Alphabet, Inc. (GOOGL) and Facebook, Inc. (FB). Opening 2018 just above the 7,000 mark, the gauge closed the year down almost 7.5 percent. The Nasdaq touched a high of 8,109 and the year's low of 6,777 in the interim. Big gains made during the first half of the year primarily in the technology, consumer cyclical, and media sector stocks were nullified in the later half. In the previous year 2017, the index returned a healthy annual gain of more than 28 percent, while the predictions for 2019 expects it to hit a low range of around 6,900 around April-May and then moving to 7,880 by December of next year. Here’s a look at the top performing individual stocks of the Nasdaq index for the year 2018. The list is presented in the order of year-to-date (YTD) performance based on the opening stock price as of Jan. 2, 2018 and closing price as of Dec. 14, 2018. The Pleasanton, Calif.-based Workday, Inc. (WDAY) is a global provider of enterprise cloud applications and solutions for human capital management (HCM). The stock had a modest run throughout the year, and the big jump came in November when the company managed to surpass the earlier announced management's guidance for revenue for its fiscal third-quarter 2019. It helped the per-share earnings jump to $0.31 cents per share, more than double what analysts on the Street predicted ($0.14).