This report ranks every S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 company on how consistently its stock price gained over the past five years — not just how much it gained, but how smooth the ride was — using a risk-adjusted score (average weekly return divided by its volatility) computed from 133,557 weekly price observations across 517 tickers. The headline surprise: although 87 companies belong to both indices, only 5 tickers show up on both indices' top-25-most-consistent lists. The two indices reward very different kinds of "steady winner," and the full breakdown — case studies, sector splits, and the tickers that couldn't be fairly judged at all — is below.
Of the 101 Nasdaq 100 companies, 87 are also S&P 500 members — the two indices overlap heavily at the constituent level. But when each index is ranked independently on risk-adjusted consistency (mean weekly return ÷ volatility of weekly return) and the top 25 most consistent gainers are pulled from each, only 5 tickers land on both lists: MU, STX, NVDA, WDC, and AVGO — all storage or semiconductor names.
In other words, 20 of the S&P 500's most consistent gainers and 20 of the Nasdaq 100's are completely different companies, even though the underlying universes mostly overlap. "Consistent" is a much narrower club than "shared index membership."
Comfort Systems USA (FIX), a mechanical/HVAC contractor, ranks #1 for consistency among all 493 eligible S&P 500 tickers — ahead of every mega-cap tech name — with a risk-adjusted score of 0.231. It also happens to have the single highest 5-year cumulative return in the entire S&P 500 pool: +2,140%, climbing from about $74 to roughly $1,650 a share, with weekly volatility of 5.9% — roughly in line with the S&P top-25 average (5.5%) and less than half of Bloom Energy's 12.3%.
FIX's business — data-center and industrial HVAC installation — rode the AI infrastructure buildout without carrying a traditional "AI stock's" volatility, which is exactly what a risk-adjusted score is built to reward.
Micron Technology (MU) is the single most consistent gainer in the Nasdaq 100 (score 0.174) and also ranks #6 out of 493 in the S&P 500 — making it the strongest performer that is genuinely elite in both rankings at once, not just present in both. Its five-year cumulative return of +1,425% came with 7.7% weekly volatility — choppier than fellow overlap name Seagate (STX, 6.6%) and slightly calmer than Western Digital (WDC, 7.5%).
That Micron and all 4 other overlap tickers (STX, NVDA, WDC, AVGO) are memory, storage, or chip names is itself a finding: the AI-driven memory/storage cycle of 2023–2026 was steady enough, for these particular companies, to read as "consistent" rather than merely "volatile and lucky."
14 of the Nasdaq 100's top 25 most consistent gainers (56%) are classified Information Technology, with the rest scattered across Communication Services, Consumer Discretionary/Staples, Health Care, Utilities, and Industrials. The S&P 500's top 25 is more balanced: 11 Information Technology, but also 6 Industrials, 3 Energy, and 3 Health Care names, plus one each in Utilities and Financials.
A reader hunting for "safe, steady growth" in the S&P 500 has real options outside tech — Comfort Systems (Industrials), McKesson and Cardinal Health (Health Care), Marathon Petroleum and Targa Resources (Energy) all made the cut. In the Nasdaq 100, steady growth has been overwhelmingly a tech-sector story.
Bloom Energy (BE) gained +1,463% over five years — the second-highest cumulative return in the entire S&P 500 pool — yet its weekly volatility (12.3%) is more than double FIX's, dropping it to consistency rank #29 of 493, just outside the top 25. Supermicro (SMCI) tells the same story: +1,058% return, but 12.9% volatility drops it to rank #36.
This is the whole point of scoring on a risk-adjusted basis rather than raw return: a stock that doubles one quarter and gives half of it back the next isn't "consistent," even if the multi-year total looks spectacular. FIX and MU post smaller (though still huge) headline numbers with far less turbulence along the way, which is why they lead their indices instead of BE or SMCI.
Averaged across every eligible ticker (not just the top 25), the Nasdaq 100 pool's mean weekly volatility is 5.31%, versus 4.46% for the S&P 500 pool — the Nasdaq 100's broader, tech-and-growth-heavy makeup makes it choppier week to week even before looking at who "wins." That gap persists among the top-25 lists too (5.82% vs. 5.48%), so Nasdaq's most consistent stocks are still, on average, more volatile week-to-week than the S&P 500's most consistent stocks.
The 25 most consistent S&P 500 gainers averaged a +697% cumulative return over five years, versus an average of just +88% across all 493 eligible S&P 500 tickers. The pattern repeats in the Nasdaq 100: the top 25 averaged +420% versus +136% across all 98 eligible tickers.
Ranking on risk-adjusted consistency wasn't just a way to find "boring" stocks — in this five-year window, the steadiest climbers also happened to be dramatically bigger winners than the typical stock in their index, not smaller ones.
In dollar terms: $10,000 split equally across the S&P 500's top 25 in September 2021 would have grown to about $79,700 by September 2026, versus about $18,800 spread across all 493 eligible S&P 500 tickers. For the Nasdaq 100 the figures are about $52,000 versus $23,500. These are equal-weighted, buy-and-hold figures that ignore dividends and trading costs, and the top 25 were picked with hindsight — so the chart shows what the steadiest stocks delivered, not a strategy anyone could have followed in 2021.
12 of the 517 tickers were excluded from every ranking because they lack enough trading history to compare on equal footing (fewer than 240 of the possible 262 weeks). Most are 2023–2026 corporate spinoffs (GE Vernova, Solventum, Veralto, Kenvue, GE HealthCare) or recent IPOs/relistings (Reddit, Arm Holdings, Qnity Electronics). Electronic Arts (EA) returned essentially no historical data at all — consistent with its 2026 going-private buyout, which triggers delisting from public exchanges.
None of these were arbitrarily dropped for looking bad — they simply haven't existed as tradeable, continuously-listed stocks long enough for a 5-year consistency score to mean anything.
Across all 133,557 weekly observations, the single best week belonged to Insmed (INSM), up +150% the week of May 27, 2024, on strong Phase 3 clinical trial results for its lead drug — and the stock held those gains afterward rather than round-tripping, confirming it was a real repricing, not a data glitch. The worst single week belonged to Fiserv (FISV), down −47% the week of October 27, 2025, after a guidance collapse; that stock also stayed down rather than bouncing back.
Both are useful context for the risk-adjusted scoring used throughout this report: a single week like either of these would overwhelm a plain average, which is exactly why "consistent" is measured relative to a stock's own volatility rather than by its raw return alone.
Put $10,000 into each of the 45 stocks that appear on either top-25 list in September 2021 and ask which one is ahead each week. Across the 262 weeks after the start, the lead changed hands 35 times between 11 different stocks — Vistra (VST) held it for 64 weeks, Constellation Energy (CEG) for 28, Nvidia (NVDA) for 26. Even Comfort Systems (FIX), which led the most weeks overall (77), spent long stretches behind.
FIX has been #1 every week since October 20, 2025 — 51 weeks in a row — and finished at $223,995, ahead of Micron (MU) at $152,455. Its best week was May 11, 2026, when the original $10,000 was worth $269,071. Press play and watch the lead change; click any bar to open that stock in the dashboard.
Group every eligible S&P 500 stock by sector and average each group (equal-weighted). Information Technology, with 72 stocks, averaged +249% over five years, Energy (21 stocks) averaged +154%, and Industrials (79) +134%. At the other end, Consumer Staples gained just 12% and Real Estate lost 3% on average.
Adjusted for bumpiness, the ranking changes: Energy has the highest average consistency score of any sector (0.0915, versus 0.0777 for tech and 0.0656 for Industrials), because its stocks averaged 4.9% weekly volatility against 5.7% for tech. Switch to the Nasdaq 100 to see tech fill 38 of its 98 stocks; hover or click a tile for the details.
Source. Constituent lists for the S&P 500 (503 tickers) and Nasdaq 100 (101 tickers) were pulled from public GitHub datasets mirroring each index's official membership. Weekly price history (open, high, low, close, volume) for all 517 unique tickers was fetched directly from Yahoo Finance's public historical-chart API for the trailing 5 years (up to 262 weeks per ticker, ending September 2026). Prices are split-adjusted as provided by that API — verified directly against Nvidia's 10-for-1 split in June 2024, which shows no discontinuity in the series.
One row is one ticker in one calendar week. A ticker can carry an
index_membership of "S&P 500," "Nasdaq 100," or "Both," so the same physical company
contributes to whichever index ranking(s) it actually belongs to.
data/sp500_nasdaq100_weekly_prices.csv.scripts/compute_growth_of_10k.ps1.scripts/compute_sector_summary.ps1.