The S&P 500 rose about 0.7% on Tuesday to trade near 7,830, notching a fresh all-time high — its first record since August 13. The benchmark is up roughly 14% in 2026, extending a three-year bull run that has lifted it 78%. Beneath the index’s steady grind to new peaks sits a narrower cohort of outliers: 25 S&P 500 constituents have more than doubled this year, and two of them are healthcare stocks — Moderna (MRNA) and Illumina (ILMN).
Of the index’s 500 members, 290 are higher on the year, meaning a clear majority have participated in the rally even as a sizable minority remains underwater. The extremes are even starker: 25 names have returned more than 100% year to date, more than doubling while the index itself climbed at a far slower pace.
The ride hasn’t been smooth. The benchmark has pulled back at times amid worries about the economic outlook, turmoil in Iran, and questions over the sustainability of artificial-intelligence spending — but the bull-market uptrend has held.
Moderna’s stock has soared roughly 582% in 2026, among the index’s best performers. The biotech was a pandemic-era winner thanks to its early lead in the coronavirus vaccine market, but its earnings and shares languished for years once demand for that product faded.
Now the turnaround is gaining traction. A cost-realignment plan is paying off, and pipeline candidates are advancing toward commercialization. The central catalyst is personalized cancer vaccine mRNA-4157, which Moderna is developing with Merck across nine Phase 2 and Phase 3 trials spanning multiple tumor types, from melanoma to bladder cancer. The latest Phase 3 readout showed mRNA-4157, combined with Merck’s Keytruda, met its goals for recurrence-free survival and metastasis-free survival in post-surgery melanoma patients.
Commercially, Moderna sells four products in the U.S. — two coronavirus vaccines, a respiratory syncytial virus vaccine, and a flu vaccine — and in Europe has won approval for a combined coronavirus-flu shot. The company reiterated that revenue could rise as much as 10% this year, which would bring 2026 sales to roughly $2 billion on top of last year’s $1.9 billion. Some analysts see at least another 100% gain in Moderna shares by 2030.
The second healthcare name among the double-up cohort is gene-sequencing bellwether Illumina, which has rallied nearly 117% so far this year.
Founded in 1998, Illumina rose to dominance by championing short-read sequencing technology, which breaks DNA into short fragments to aid genetic analysis. It now holds roughly 70% of the global market, with an installed base of around 21,000 sequencing systems. As the market expands from research into clinical use, the company is building tools to help physicians diagnose patients and select treatments.
Illumina made a controversial push into clinical testing in August 2021, completing an $8 billion acquisition of cancer-testing company Grail even as European Union antitrust regulators reviewed the deal; it ultimately spun Grail off as a separate entity in 2024.
The company estimates its total addressable market tops $100 billion in the clinical arena, plus more than $25 billion in research settings. Key growth drivers include oncology therapy selection, minimal residual disease detection, and broader adoption of whole-genome sequencing.
