In mid-February 2020 global equities were sitting at record highs, lifted by a decade-long bull market, rock-bottom interest rates and a U.S. economy near full employment.
Within weeks a pandemic and worldwide lockdowns triggered one of the fastest, sharpest selloffs ever recorded.
The world has cycled through a great deal since — the largest fiscal and monetary rescue on record, a reopening inflation shock, the AI boom and now a war that has once again convulsed energy markets.
And through all of it, Wall Street has never looked healthier. The S&P 500 has climbed about 120% from its February 2020 level and the Nasdaq 100 by more than 200%.
Yet more than six years later, a handful of mega-cap giants — each still worth north of $100 billion — remain stranded in the red, trading below their pre-Covid price.
It is one of the strangest divergences in the modern market.
Run a screen on Benzinga Pro movers from Feb. 15, 2020 through June 17, 2026, filter for companies above $100 billion in market value, and sort by the worst performers.
The names that surface are not obscure. They are some of the most recognized brands in the world.
These Are The 10 Worst-Performing Stocks Since February 2020
Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. (NYSE:BABA) tops the list, down about 51% from its pre-Covid level.
The Boeing Co. (NYSE:BA) follows, off roughly 34%, with Medtronic plc (NYSE:MDT) close behind.
The Walt Disney Co. (NYSE:DIS), Pfizer Inc. (NYSE:PFE), AT&T Inc. (NYSE:T), Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE:VZ), Salesforce Inc. (NYSE:CRM), Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. (NYSE:BMY) and HDFC Bank Ltd. (NYSE:HDB) round out the ten, each still between 15% and 28% underwater.
For most of the market, February 2020 was a brief scar that healed within months.
The Pandemic Was Only The Beginning
For this group, it marked the start of a longer unraveling.
Each name carries its own wound.
Alibaba absorbed years of Beijing’s regulatory crackdown, slowing Chinese consumption and the persistent discount Western investors now apply to Chinese equities.
Boeing never escaped the shadow of the 737 MAX, then layered on fresh quality and production crises that have repeatedly grounded its jets — and its cash flow.
Pfizer and Bristol-Myers Squibb tell the pharmaceutical version of the same story. Pfizer rode a once-in-a-generation Covid windfall, then watched vaccine and antiviral revenue collapse as the pandemic faded. Bristol-Myers faces a wall of patent expirations on its biggest drugs — the so-called patent cliff, where earnings erode as cheaper copies arrive.
AT&T and Verizon remain trapped by heavy debt and a saturated wireless market where growth is scarce and price wars are constant.
Disney rebuilt its theme parks but bled billions building a streaming business investors have yet to reward.
Salesforce ran into the great software repricing, when the market stopped paying premium multiples for slowing growth.
Medtronic has struggled with sluggish device demand and thin margins, and HDFC Bank’s U.S.-listed shares have been weighed down by its mega-merger and a weaker rupee.
A Lost Decade Has Happened Before
This is not the first time a basket of blue-chip giants has spent years stranded below an old high while the index marched on.
In March 2000, at the peak of the dot-com bubble, investors believed the largest technology names could only compound higher.
Cisco Systems Inc. (NASDAQ:CSCO) briefly became the most valuable company on earth — and it only reclaimed that high 26 years later.
Microsoft Corp. (NYSE:MSFT) needed more than fifteen years to climb back above its 1999 peak, even as the S&P 500 doubled around it.
The lesson rhymes today.
A market can roar to record after record while a specific cohort of yesterday’s leaders sits frozen, waiting for either a new growth story or a buyer willing to look past the scars.
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