9 Large-Cap Stocks Hitting All-Time Highs

The Dow and the S&P 500 have both backed off all-time highs reached in August, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq has failed to touch new high ground since early June.

So, given that we’re in a brief period of consolidation and entering the historically worst month of the year for stocks, I wanted to take a moment to highlight the large-cap stocks that are hitting all-time highs as of August 31.

While headline indexes struggle to claw their way back to previous highs and former leaders get rejected in the face of overhead resistance, the next leaders continue getting bid up by deep-pocketed investors.

Cabot Growth Investor’s Mike Cintolo uses relative performance to pinpoint these opportunities, and Cabot Options Trader’s Jacob Mintz likes to target stocks that are seeing a lot of bullish call buying.

Both are tried and true methods for identifying potential winners, but today I wanted to use a simpler method that takes little more than a few seconds and a stock screener.

Simply put, we’re going to look for stocks hitting all-time highs right now, as the headline indexes languish.

Obviously, you’ll want to do more research before buying any names that you identify this way, but it’s an excellent way to fill out a watchlist.

Today, we’re going to screen for large-cap stocks hitting all-time highs.

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Why Large-Cap Stocks?

The rationale for filtering for large-cap stocks is two-fold:

1. Small- and mid-cap stocks are more susceptible to false breakouts and overreactions. Major spikes higher in lower-volume stocks are very susceptible to mean reversion.
   
2. Large-cap stocks have been the best performers of the latest bull phase (up 69.4% in the last five years, compared to a 36.1% return for mid-cap stocks and a 28.0% return for small-cap stocks, all measured by the performance of the corresponding S&P indexes). Although they’ve historically underperformed small caps over the long haul, that has not been the case for more than half a decade.

So the first element of our screen is large-cap stocks or bigger.

The second element is straightforward: We’ll simply screen for stocks hitting all-time highs using Finviz (our preferred free screening tool; all-time highs is one of their “Technical” criteria).

That screen (at the time of writing) produced nine large-cap stocks trading at all-time highs. Perhaps unsurprisingly, given the global geopolitical situation, energy stocks make up the lion’s share of these names.

That said, there are a few eye-catching names in there that are probably worth paying attention to, regardless of what happens with volatile energy prices.

The 9 Large-Cap Stocks at All-Time Highs

As mentioned previously, four of the nine stocks—HF Sinclair (DINO), Marathon (MPC), Phillips 66 (PSX), and Valero (VLO)—are energy companies. As such, given their reliance on the potentially unpredictable movements of oil prices due to military action, I’m inclined to exclude those from our results.

Of course, if oil and gas investing is more your bailiwick, feel free to make note of those outperformers.

Also being excluded from the results is Apogee Therapeutics (APGE), which is trading at all-time highs due to an upcoming buyout by AbbVie (ABBV). The buyout price is $135.11 in cash, meaning there’s no room for upward movement and the market is pricing in the full value of the buyout already.

That leaves us with four names worthy of a deeper dive.

CrowdStrike Holdings (CRWD)

CrowdStrike is a leading cloud cybersecurity company best known for its Falcon platform, covering endpoint, cloud, identity, SIEM, and increasingly AI security.

Shares have risen by 121% in the last year and more than 220% in the last five.

The company reported earnings last week (August 25), beating on both earnings and revenue and raising forward guidance.

Given some weakness with AI names of late (and the fact that this is the only tech company on the list), CRWD is definitely a stock for your watchlist, especially if you’re bullish on cybersecurity.

KB Financial (KB), UBS Group (UBS)

Next up on our list are two international financial names.
KB Financial (KB) is South Korea’s largest financial group, with banking, insurance, cards, brokerage, and asset management businesses.

The company beat both revenue and EPS expectations when it last reported in July, and shares have risen 59.2% in the last year (and 171.6% in the last five).

UBS Group (UBS), on the other hand, is a global bank headquartered in Switzerland. It’s one of the world’s dominant wealth-management firms, with $6.9 trillion in assets under management.

The Swiss bank missed expectations on both earnings and revenues in the latest quarter, but the enduring bull market has helped drive shares higher by 39.9% in the last year and 231.8% over the last five.

Both international banks pay modest dividends, but their performance going forward will be heavily influenced by the health of the bull market, given UBS’ wealth management exposure and KB Financial’s dependence on the strength of the South Korean economy, which is heavily influenced by the performance of chip stocks.

Magnum Ice Cream Co. (MICC)

The final name on our list is Magnum Ice Cream Company (MICC), a newly independent global ice cream giant spun out of Unilever, which owns brands including Magnum, Ben & Jerry’s, Cornetto, and Wall’s.

The company was spun off in December 2025 and boasts approximately one-fifth of the global ice cream market share.

One enticing element of the stock is that spin-offs have a tendency to outperform, partially owing to better efficiencies in the corporate structure and increased clarity for investors.

Shares have risen 37% since being spun off in December and have been in a strong uptrend since April.

Given the recency of its spin-off, there’s not a ton of visibility into growth trends, although management expects organic growth for the company to be in the mid-single digits this year.

That may not sound like much, but it’s a strong showing for a consumer staple stock.

I previously expressed my bullishness on cybersecurity in an episode of the Street Check podcast, and I still think it’s a smart way to play the growth of AI, which makes CrowdStrike my favorite name on this list. That said, if you’re looking for a non-tech opportunity, Magnum is an interesting way to add some exposure to consumer staples.

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*This post has been updated from a previously published version.