Executive Mosaic’s GovCon Index slipped 0.15% to $4,844.11 to begin March but still managed to eke out a slim 0.1% week-on-week gain. The index that tracks the performance of 30 major publicly traded companies in the government contracting industry never had a losing week since January 26.
Wall Street achieved several milestones before the weekend, with the Nasdaq Composite Index gaining 1.14% to 16,302.24, a new record close that surpassed its November 2021 record. The S&P 500 topped 5,100 for the first time on Friday, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.23%. Like the GovCon Index, the three major U.S. indexes had positive weekly returns.
Another highlight for the week was the $50 billion increase in NVIDIA’s (Nasdaq: NVDA) market capitalization to $2.01 trillion. According to Yahoo Finance data, the chipmaker is the third American company, after Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) and Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT), that belongs in the $2 trillion market value club.
Meanwhile, the GovCon Index is fresh from a strong February following its 5.25% month-on-month gain. With most investors focusing on the strong demand for artificial intelligence, Palantir Technologies (NYSE: PLTR) was the top performer on the GCI. The AI stock gained 8.53% for the week, representing a 217.98% trailing one-year price return.
