10 Firms Shine Amid Market Slump

Ten companies kicked off this week’s trading on a positive note, defying a broader market pessimism amid growing trade tensions among the US, Mexico, China, and Canada over the retaliation of tariffs on each other’s goods.

On Monday, the Dow Jones lost another 0.28 percent, while the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq Composite both registered steep declines of 0.76 percent and 1.20 percent, respectively. The slump came following President Donald Trump’s announcements that he would slap a 25-percent tariff on Canadian and Mexican goods, while a special 60-percent rate would be taxed on Chinese products.

Ten companies under mixed sectors defied a broader market downturn, leading the charge among market advancers. In this article, we will examine which companies performed well and the factors driving their success.

This list of 10 top advancers only considered the companies with at least $2 billion in market capitalization and $5 million in daily trading volume.

The New York Stock Exchange building. Photo by Дмитрий Трепольский on Pexels

10. IREN Ltd. (NASDAQ:IREN)

Shares of IREN grew by 4.5 percent on Monday, adding 0.46 points to close at $10.68.

IREN, a Bitcoin mining firm, traded in line with Bitcoin prices which at the time of writing marked a 3.54-percent gain at $101,000 apiece.

Investors also seemed to have repositioned their portfolios ahead of the company’s release of its earnings performance for the fourth quarter of 2024, due for release on February 12.

Year-to-date, IREN’s current valuation marked a mere 2-percent growth from the $10.46 price registered on the first trading day of 2025.

Earlier this month, IREN announced that it was planning to raise as much as $1 billion from a follow-on offering to expand its Bitcoin mining operations. It said it plans to increase its capacity to 57 EH/s by the second half of the year, with 50 EH/s targeted in the first half of the year.

9. Harmony Gold Mining Company Ltd. (NYSE:HMY)

Shares of Harmony Gold rose by 4.7 percent on Monday to finish at $11.8 apiece as investor sentiment was fueled by news that it was on track to surpass its annual gold production target of 1.5 million ounces, despite booking lower output for the first half of the financial year.

Harmony, the largest gold producer in South Africa, said in a recent trading update that gold production for the six months ending December 2024 was expected to settle between 790,000 ounces to 805,000 ounces. The figures, however, marked a decline from the 832,349 ounces produced in the same period a year earlier mainly due to planned lower output from its South African underground mines and Hidden Valley in Papua New Guinea.

However, South African underground recovered grades are expected to be higher than the projected 5.80 grams per ton, on the back of a strong performance from Mponeng, the world’s deepest mine.