These stocks fell hard in 2025, but analysts see as much as 65% upside for them in 2026

By Philip van Doorn Although the S&P 500 has returned 19.3% so far this year, dozens of stocks are showing significant declines for 2025 These four stocks are among those favored by analysts to recover with double-digit gains following declines of at least 20% in 2025. This is turning out to be another banner year for investors with broad positions in U.S. stocks. But there are always exceptions, and analysts expect many of this year's worst performers to come roaring back with double-digit gains in 2026. If you have been invested in an S&P 500 SPX index fund, you have continued to ride a remarkable bull market that has followed the index's decline of 18.1% in 2022, when its information technology sector fell 28.2%. All returns in this article include reinvested dividends. The SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust SPY, which tracks the large-cap U.S. benchmark index by holding all of its stocks weighted by market capitalization, was up 19.3% for 2025 through Friday, for a gain of 88.4% since the end of 2022. The index's weighting by market cap means that the largest five companies held by SPY (Nvidia Corp. (NVDA), Apple Inc. (AAPL), Microsoft Corp. (MSFT), Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN) and two common share classes of Alphabet Inc. (GOOGL) (GOOG)) make up 30.2% of the exchange-traded fund's portfolio. Nvidia has the heaviest weighting in the S&P 500 and in the SPY portfolio (7.8%). The stock was up 42% for 2025 and 1,205% from the end of 2022 through Friday. So the S&P 500 is highly concentrated despite including so many stocks. Weighting by market cap rewards success, but this means index-fund investors' portfolios may not be as diversified as they want them to be. At the end of November we looked at performance figures for nine different Invesco index exchange-traded funds that take different approaches to constructing portfolios based on the S&P 500. These and similar ETFs can help investors move some of their money away from straight cap-weighting. It might surprise you to see which of these indexing strategies trounced the performance of the S&P 500. Before we screen this year's worst-performing stocks in the S&P 500, here is a summary of how the index's 11 sectors have performed for 2025 though Friday: The S&P 500 has returned 19.3% so far in 2025, with all 11 sectors showing positive returns for the year. You might not have expected to see the communications sector at the top of the list, but keep in mind that this is a tech-oriented sector. It includes Meta Platforms Inc. (META) and two common share classes of Alphabet. Combined, those three stocks make up 39% of the State Street Communication Services Select Sector SPDR ETF XLC. This ETF tracks the communications sector of the S&P 500, weighted by market cap. Screening this year's worst performers in the S&P 500 Among the S&P 500, 171 stocks were down for the year through Friday, and 51 were down at least 20%. Among these 51 stocks, there are 20 with majority buy or equivalent ratings among at least five analysts polled by LSEG. Here they are, ranked by 12-month upside potential implied by consensus price targets: Click on the tickers for more about each company. Read: Tomi Kilgore's detailed guide to the information available on the MarketWatch quote page Don't miss: 10 of the most loved dividend stocks for 2026 - sporting yields of 4% or more -Philip van Doorn This content was created by MarketWatch, which is operated by Dow Jones & Co. MarketWatch is published independently from Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal. (END) Dow Jones Newswires 12-29-25 0959ET