We recently compiled a list of the 10 Best Performing S&P 500 Stocks So Far in 2025. In this article, we are going to take a look at where Crowdstrike Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:CRWD) stands against the other stocks.

Emily Rowland, co-chief investment strategist at John Hancock Investment Management, joined a discussion on CNBC’s ‘Squawk Box’ on February 13 to share her insights on the markets and the upcoming PPI (Producer Price Index) report. She thinks that the S&P earnings are highly underappreciated right now. She noted that the market’s reaction to inflation data has been asymmetric. While higher inflation numbers are often shrugged off, any relief from softer inflation prints tends to cause bigger moves in the markets. This was evident in the response to the CPI (Consumer Price Index) report. Regarding market performance, Rowland highlighted that the S&P 500 earnings were coming in with strong growth (16% year-over-year for the fourth quarter) and this growth is broad-based across sectors like healthcare and utilities. Financials also showed significant gains with a 50% increase.

On discussing President Trump’s announcement of retaliatory tariffs via Truth Social, Rowland said that her team avoids making tactical investment decisions based on political outcomes due to their unpredictability and rapid changes. In terms of attractive sectors for investment within US markets, she highlighted healthcare and industrial companies as promising areas due to their strong fundamentals and potential benefits from ongoing supply chain reshoring activities within the US. While acknowledging political factors can influence sector performance, her strategy focuses on longer-term economic trends rather than short-term political developments when considering investments in key indices like those represented by major US equities such as those found in the S&P 500 index.

Methodology

We first sifted through the Finviz stock screener to compile a list of the best-performing S&P 500 stocks. We then picked the top 10 stocks with the highest year-to-date performance, as of February 17. The stocks are ranked in ascending order of their year-to-date performance. We’ve also added the hedge fund sentiment for each stock which was sourced from Insider Monkey’s database.

Why are we interested in the stocks that hedge funds pile into? The reason is simple: our research has shown that we can outperform the market by imitating the top stock picks of the best hedge funds. Our quarterly newsletter’s strategy selects 14 small-cap and large-cap stocks every quarter and has returned 275% since May 2014, beating its benchmark by 150 percentage points (see more details here).

Crowdstrike Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:CRWD)

Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 74

Year-to-Date Performance as of February 17: 32.03%

Crowdstrike Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:CRWD) provides cybersecurity solutions globally. Its unified Falcon platform offers cloud-delivered protection for endpoints, cloud workloads, identity, and data, which encompasses areas like threat intelligence, security management, and AI-powered automation. It primarily sells subscriptions to its platform and cloud modules.

Mizuho and Truist both raised the company’s price targets on February 12. Mizuho increased it to $450 from $385 with an Outperform rating due to positive market sentiment and demand for cybersecurity, data analytics, and SaaS. Truist raised its target to $460 from $385 with a Buy rating because of strong Falcon platform adoption and Falcon Flex deal traction.

The company’s Falcon Flex subscription model fuels its stock rally. FQ3 2025 saw over 150 Flex transactions, totaling over $600 million in deal value. Flex accounts now represent over $1.3 billion in total deal value, with average Flex subscriptions far exceeding typical contracts. This drives rapid platform adoption: Flex customers average over nine modules, with some more than doubling or tripling adoption. They spend more multi-millions on average compared to regular customers.

Flex is expected to deliver faster, larger ARR growth. This, combined with strong financial performance, which includes Q3 revenue going up by 29%  year-over-year, has propelled Crowdstrike Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:CRWD) stock upwards. The company’s innovative Falcon platform, market leadership, and customer retention solidify its position and justify its premium valuation.

Aristotle Atlantic Core Equity Strategy sees Crowdstrike Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:CRWD) as well-positioned for growth in the expanding cloud cybersecurity market due to its competitive advantages and strong product offerings. It stated the following in its Q4 2024 investor letter:

“CrowdStrike Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:CRWD) provides cybersecurity products and services that offer endpoint protection and threat intelligence solutions, enabling customers to prevent damage from targeted attacks, detect advanced malware and search all endpoints. The company’s open cloud architecture enables it and third-party partners to rapidly innovate, build and deploy new cloud modules that can provide customers with enhanced functionality across a myriad of use cases.

We see the cloud cybersecurity market as positioned to experience strong growth over the next few years, driven by continued migration from on-premises to cloud-based architecture. We believe CrowdStrike can benefit from this trend due to its early-mover advantage, multiple product offerings and native integrations with leading cloud platforms. The increasing threats from state-sanctioned cybercriminals using high-performance computing and AI necessitate higher spending on advanced cybersecurity products. The total addressable market (TAM) is projected to grow significantly over the next four calendar years. Additionally, CrowdStrike’s cloud-native architecture and unified platform approach provide competitive advantages, resulting in high customer retention and widespread adoption of multiple modules.”

Overall CRWD ranks 6th on our list of the best performing S&P 500 stocks so far in 2025. While we acknowledge the potential of CRWD as an investment, our conviction lies in the belief that AI stocks hold great promise for delivering high returns and doing so within a shorter time frame. If you are looking for an AI stock that is more promising than CRWD but that trades at less than 5 times its earnings, check out our report about the cheapest AI stock.

READ NEXT: 20 Best AI Stocks To Buy Now and Complete List of 59 AI Companies Under $2 Billion in Market Cap.

Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.