The IT sector, from an economic standpoint, moves between between breakneck innovation and waves of layoffs. While thousands of jobs disappeared amid restructuring and cost-cutting, profits and investor returns surged for a select group of companies. This trend is captured a new report, covering the sectors with the highest gross returns in 2025, along with the leading companies driving these gains.
The report comes from the analytical firm BestBrokers who considered global performance using the MSCI ACWI Indexes, which cover 20 industries across 49 countries, from Information Technology and Semiconductors to Energy, Health Care, and Consumer Discretionary.
The report examines market capitalisations (full market cap for separate companies and MSCI free-float-adjusted figures for the sectors), average company size, and gross returns across horizons from three months to ten years.
MSCI defines the free float of a security as the proportion of shares outstanding that is deemed to be available for purchase in the public equity markets by international investors.
By highlighting the top companies in each sector, the report also provides a clear, data-driven view of the firms shaping market trends and the forces behind sectoral performance.
Growth of 24% in 2025
Data shows that the Information Technology sector registered just a 23.93% one-year gross total return, based on share price gains and reinvested dividends, ranking only 10th among major sectors. The industry was outperformed by areas ranging from precious metals and semiconductors to materials, financials, industrials, and even traditionally defensive utilities. Hence, this represents a reversal for a sector long seen as the market’s primary growth engine.
This means the IT sector ranks 10th among major industries, posting a 23.93% one-year gross total return, just behind Financials at 29.48%, Industrials at 25.79%, and even traditionally defensive Utilities at 24.11%. By contrast, 2025 was dominated by precious metals, with Silver and Gold mining delivering outsized gains of 207.42% and 175.69%, respectively, three to four times higher than other leading sectors such as Semiconductors, which recorded a still-robust but far more modest 50.65%.
Forecast for the net five years
The five-year picture looks more encouraging for the IT sector, which climbs to sixth place with a 17.88% gross total return. However, it still trails Gold Mining at 23.45% and Semiconductors at 23.08%, while Energy Producers (19.78%), Silver Mining (18.23%), and the broader Energy sector (17.96%) also edged ahead, showing that even over a longer horizon, commodity- and supply-chain-driven industries delivered stronger returns than ‘Big Tech’.
Free-float-adjusted average market capitalisations
Information Technology ranks first in MSCI’s free-float-adjusted average market capitalisations, with companies in the index averaging $80.66 billion across 304 constituents. Communication Services comes in second, at $64.82 billion across 123 companies, including heavyweights like Meta and Alphabet (Google). Semiconductors follow, averaging $43.19 billion across 249 companies, led by industry giants such as Broadcom and ASML.
The IT sector’s top companies are also the world’s largest by market capitalisation in 2025. NVIDIA leads with a full market cap of $4.56 trillion at year-end, followed by Apple at $4.06 trillion and Microsoft at $3.63 trillion, ranking third and fourth, respectively. Alphabet (Google) claims second place, leading the Communication Services sector, while Amazon, in fifth place, remains the largest in the Consumer Discretionary sector.
Alan Goldberg, analyst at BestBrokers, says in a statement sent to Digital Journal: “Looking ahead to 2026, IT sector returns are expected to become increasingly bifurcated. Companies with direct exposure to high-growth areas – such as AI acceleration, cloud infrastructure, and advanced semiconductor fabrication – are well-positioned to outperform, benefiting from strong adoption trends and enhanced pricing power. In contrast, firms reliant on consumer-driven hardware or cyclical IT services may continue to face margin pressure and subdued growth.”
Further to 2026, Goldberg expects: “The structural integration of IT with the semiconductor ecosystem, as seen in NVIDIA, ASML, Broadcom, and TSMC, further reinforces the sector’s concentration of value and potential for targeted outperformance. Overall, 2026 is likely to favour IT companies with scalable, innovation-led revenue streams, while aggregate sector returns may trend closer to long-term historical averages.“
