Postgame Analysis Of 2025 Stock Picks Increases Chances For Profitable 2026

While an end-of-year analysis of stock market trades is always a worthwhile endeavor, it’s easy to see why growth investors might be a bit rusty at the practice in recent years.

The stock market has delivered another year of strong gains. And 2025 was another great year for growth stocks, as this year’s list of the Best Stocks of 2025 shows.

While gains for some growth investors have been stronger than others during the three-year bull run, the common bond among the most successful investors is the same. They’re all strong in the process of a post-year analysis. That means they’re good at turning past trades into learning experiences.

IPO Stocks Can Be Lucrative: Here's How To Buy Them

Initial public offerings like Medline (MDLN) can get a lot of attention — and rightly so. The medical supplier priced at 29 Wednesday night, opened at 35 and closed at 41 on its first day of trading. Medline stock may or may not go on to form an IPO base from here. But with the market for initial public offerings expected to pick up some steam in 2026, let’s examine the characteristics of an IPO base.

Stock Market Leader Micron Gave A Crystal-Clear Buy Signal. Here's How

Micron Technology (MU) has been a big winner in the stock market this year. And while an earnings sell-off for Oracle (ORCL) cast a pall on several artificial intelligence stocks Thursday, Micron stock is still near highs ahead of its scheduled Dec. 17 earnings report.

Micron stock started rallying with the rest of the market earlier this year after the bullish follow-through day for both the Nasdaq composite and S&P 500 on April 22. But Micron’s big breakout didn’t come until several months later in early September. That’s when it surged out of a cup-with-handle base, a chart pattern that Investor’s Business Daily research has identified throughout decades of market research.

Making Money In Growth Stocks: How To Find The Correct Buy Point

Hindsight may be 20/20. But with some studying, your stockpicking foresight can get pretty good in growth stocks, too.

Foreseeing the move by a stock with terrific fundamentals (the C and A in IBD’s CAN SLIM investing model), a No. 1 ranking in its industry, and loads of fund sponsorship, before it happens is crucial. If such a stock breaks out with force, then you’re more likely to grab shares at the proper buy point.

How To Use The Accumulation/Distribution Rating To Find Stock Market Leaders

When Credicorp (BAP) soared 5.5% in the stock market Thursday, the heavy-volume gain helped improve its Accumulation/Distribution Rating to A- from B+. Credicorp normally trades close to 300,000 shares a day, but on Thursday volume more than doubled to 701,000 shares.

IBD’s Accumulation/Distribution Rating looks at a stock’s price and volume over the past three months of trading. Heavy volume on up days helps the rating, while heavy volume on down days hurts it. Stocks are rated on an A+ to E scale. A+ is the highest indication of institutional buying. E indicates heavy institutional selling.

Gauge Emerging Large-Cap Leadership With This Stock Market Screen

Stock market leadership continues to broaden. Take a look at airline stocks, which were among the top gainers during Wednesday’s pre-Thanksgiving rally, while money continued to flow out of large-cap technology names like Meta Platforms (META) and Oracle (ORCL). More recently, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) and Nvidia (NVDA) have come under selling pressure.

One way to monitor the liquid, large-cap leadership in the stock market is with the IBD Big Cap 20 screen, which is updated electronically every day at Investors.com. It’s located in the Stock Lists tab found along the top of the homepage. And the two common traits of large caps found in the screen each day? They tend to have the best fundamentals in their industry groups. They’re also the best price performers.

The 21-Day Exponential Moving Average: Why This Is Your New Edge

The 21-day exponential moving average (EMA) can be thought of as the Goldilocks of moving averages.

We have dozens of Investor’s Corners on when to buy a stock and when to sell. But what about holding?

A 10-day simple moving average (SMA) can be too tight and a 50-day simple moving average too loose.

If you accumulate enough experience in the CAN SLIM investing strategy, you might often conclude that the 21-day EMA can often be just right.

How To Quickly Capitalize On Shifts In Stock Market Leadership

Sector rotation has been on display in the stock market for several weeks now. Thursday’s action, for example, was enough to give investors a serious case of vertigo.

Just when it looked as if artificial intelligence stocks were ready to surrender their leadership to biotech, gold players and other health care related names, a strong earnings report from Nvidia (NVDA) reignited a rally in AI stocks Thursday morning. And just as fast as the rally came, it went.

How To Gauge Stock Market Sell Signals With Stocks On The Move

The law of supply and demand has governed the stock market since its inception. If there’s strong demand for a stock and not much supply, the price goes up. Conversely, low demand and high supply tends to result in weaker price performance.

Supply and demand is on display every day in the Stocks on the Move screen on the homepage page of Investors.com.

There’s no doubt that the Up section is a great way to find emerging stock market leaders moving higher in heavy volume. In many cases, these stocks are often in the early stages of being accumulated by mutual funds and other large institutional investors.

Tracking The Stock Market Trend For Long-Term Investment Success

The stock market trend is the most important rule of buying stocks since IBD’s studies show that three out of four stocks follow the market direction. That means you always want to stay in sync with the overall market.

Buying stocks during a market uptrend greatly improve your chances of being right. But if you buy as the market indexes are turning lower or in a downtrend, the odds shift, increasing your risk and the likelihood of being wrong.