·January 3, 2023·3 min read

The 10 biggest winners in the S&P 500 this year were led by an oil giant Warren Buffett owns. The top stocks saw a combined $357 billion increase in market value.

Warren Buffett at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln — Warren Buffett

University of Nebraska-Lincoln

Despite a big down year for stocks, a handful of names managed to print huge gains in 2022.
Oil stocks dominated the S&P 500’s top 10 winners this year as commodity prices spiked.
These are the index’s 10 best performing stocks in 2022, which added a combined $357 billion in market value.

2022 was a tough year for most stock market investors, with the S&P 500 finishing the year down 20% as inflation and higher interest rates dragged down investor sentiment.

But there were still some big winners in 2022, mainly in the energy sector as higher commodity prices sparked by Russia’s war against Ukraine led to record profits for oil companies like Exxon Mobil and others.

One investor who won big was billionaire Warren Buffett, as his Berkshire Hathaway built a substantial stake throughout 2022 in the S&P 500’s best performer: Occidental Petroleum. Buffett also owns a stake in Chevron, which was the 17th best S&P 500 performer in 2022 with a gain of about 50%.

The energy sector finished the year up 56%, making it the only one to print positive gains for the year. Meanwhile, about 70% of S&P 500 companies logged negative returns, making it all the more impressive for energy stocks to post such massive gains.

Combined, the top 10 performing S&P 500 stocks in 2022 added a total of $357 billion in market value. That pales in comparison to the $1.6 trillion in market value erased by the S&P 500’s top 10 losers, which included Tesla, Meta Platforms, and PayPal, among others.

These were the 10 top performing S&P 500 companies in 2022.

10. Valero Energy