May 2025 in returns

May 2025 was the month the AI trade came back, and came back concentrated. The Nasdaq gained 9.6%, Nvidia 24.1%, the S&P 500 6.2%, and breadth was genuinely wide at 659 of 868 stocks (76%) — but the returns at the top were of a different order entirely. CoreWeave rose 169.5%, Nebius 61.7%, AppLovin 45.9%, NRG 42.8%, Credo 41.6%, The Trade Desk 40.3% and Astera Labs 38.9%. Compute, the power to run it and the networking between: a single coherent bet, expressed through half a dozen names, paying out at once.

Crypto recovered in its own register. Ethereum gained 41.0% — its best month until July's — and the tail followed, with Kaito +133.5% and ether.fi +92.5%, though participation was only middling at 40 of 85 coins (47%), so this was a rally in specific stories rather than the asset class. Healthcare took the month's damage: UnitedHealth -26.6%, Regeneron -18.0% and Eli Lilly -17.8%, joined by EchoStar at -21.1%. The VIX fell 24.8%, complacency restored. What makes May worth marking is not its size but its shape — for the first time since November 2024, the market had picked a theme and committed to it wholesale, and it would keep paying for another two months before the doubts set in.