The Russell 3000 contains US stocks from large-caps to small-caps that make up more than 98% of publicly-traded market cap. Below we show the average YTD total return of Russell 3000 stocks in each sector through the close on December 10th. While the cap-weighted Energy sector of the S&P 500 is up slightly year-to-date, the average US Energy stock across market caps is actually down 10% on the year. On the flip side, the average Technology stock is up 34.5% on the year, which is more than 11 percentage points higher than the average for all stocks in the Russell 3000. Other sectors that have seen their stocks outperform the average include Health Care, Real Estate, and Industrials.

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Below is a look at the 40 best-performing stocks in the Russell 3,000 so far this year. The top-performing stock is Axsome Therapeutics (AXSM), which has developed a promising narcolepsy drug. AXSM is currently up 1,628.7% in 2019 — more than double the next best performer.

You’ll notice that the large majority of names on the list are biotech companies in the Health Care sector. When biotech is working, this is usually the case. The potential upside for drugs and treatments that ultimately work is enormous, and during uptrending markets when investors are willing to take on risk, small-cap biotechs absolutely fly.

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To clean up the list a little, below we show the best performing non-Health Care stocks in the Russell 3,000 year-to-date. As shown, EverQuote (EVER) ranks first with a gain of 761.5%, followed by Cardlytics (CDLX), Enphase Energy (ENPH), and Roku (ROKU).

You’ve likely not heard of most of the names on these two lists, but we’d recommend sitting down and researching them just to get a better sense of what’s REALLY been working lately.