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Which stock has performed best since the market top in mid February?
If you guessed a pharmaceutical company with a promising coronavirus treatment, you wouldn’t be far off. A technology company that enables work-from-home computing would also be a good guess, but also wrong.
How about a financial company?
It’s counterintuitive — but true. MarketAxess Holdings Inc. MKTX, +4.28% has gained 49.14% since the S&P 500’s record close on February 19, according to Dow Jones Market Data, even as concerns about households and businesses facing cash flow problems and rock-bottom interest rates have pushed the financial sector to be the second-worst performing S&P 500 sector this year, behind only energy.
| Company Name | % Change |
| MarketAxess Holdings, Inc. | 49.14 |
| Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, Inc. REGN, +1.90% | 42.61 |
| Newmont Corporation NEM, -2.47% | 35.13 |
| Citix Systems, Inc. CTXS, +2.01% | 25.82 |
| Cabot Oil & Gas Corporation COG, -5.65% | 25.77 |
| Clorox Company CLX, +0.86% | 24.73 |
| Incyte Corporation INCY, +3.55% | 19.46 |
| Gilead Sciences, Inc. GILD, +4.27% | 18.17 |
| Fortinet, Inc. FTNT, +2.64% | 17.66 |
| Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc. TTWO, +2.11% | 17.51 |
| Source: Dow Jones Market Data | |
Yet MarketAxess, which brands itself as “the leader in e-trading for global fixed income,” may be in a sweet spot as investors from individuals to the United States Federal Reserve give bonds another look — as both issuers and buyers.
As MarketWatch’s Philip van Doorn noted earlier in April, MarketAxess increased revenue 35.7% from a year ago in the first quarter — more than pandemic darlings Amazon.com Inc. AMZN, +1.23% and Netflix Inc. NFLX, +1.14% Trading volumes were up 29% compared to a year ago starting in February, company executives said on their quarterly earnings call in late April.
See:ETFs behaving badly: ‘exactly what they are supposed to do’ or ‘just what we feared’?
