We recently compiled a list of the Why These 15 Retail Stocks Are Skyrocketing So Far In 2025. In this article, we are going to take a look at where Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (NYSE:BABA) stands against the other retail stocks.
The retail industry in 2025 has been doing surprisingly well. Growth has started to accelerate for many companies and AI is allowing a lot more efficiency in the supply chain. The macros have also cooperated with the retail industry as the strong labor market with positive wage growth has pushed more consumer spending.
Retailers are capitalizing on this by expanding into new markets and spending more on AI-powered supply chains and checkout systems. Plus, there’s chatter of interest rates coming down this year, especially with pressure from the Trump administration. This could boost the sector even more.
The convergence of these factors has created fertile ground for retail stocks. It is worth looking into those that have performed the best so far this year, as the market has rewarded these companies for good reasons.
Methodology
For this article, I screened the top-performing retail stocks year-to-date. Stocks that I have covered recently will be excluded from this list.
I will also mention the number of hedge fund investors in these stocks. Why are we interested in the stocks that hedge funds invest in? 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).
An e-commerce platform displaying a wide range of products to customers online.
Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (NYSE:BABA)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders In Q3 2024: 115
Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (NYSE:BABA) is an e-commerce company that is also aggressively expanding into the data center and AI sector.
The stock has delivered solid gains so far in 2025 as the broader Chinese stock market continues to surge and the company’s involvement with AI and data centers gains recognition, especially after it stated that its latest AI model was better than that of DeepSeek, though it failed to make as big of a splash.
Regardless, revenue from AI-related cloud services grew by triple digits in Q3 2024, and it will likely continue to grow fast in Q4 since China has been pushing its domestic AI models, almost all of which will require data centers in China. Q4 results are expected to be posted on February 20, 2025.
The consensus price target of $115.86 implies 11.72% upside.
BABA stock is up 22.08% year-to-date.
Overall BABA ranks 8th on our list of the retail stocks that are skyrocketing so far in 2025. While we acknowledge the potential of BABA as an investment, our conviction lies in the belief that some AI stocks hold greater promise for delivering higher returns and doing so within a shorter time frame. If you are looking for an AI stock that is more promising than BABA but that trades at less than 5 times its earnings, check out our report about the cheapest AI stock.
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Disclosure: None. This article was originally published at Insider Monkey.
