Palantir Ranks As S&P 500’s Best Performer Mid-Year, But Retail Traders Tread With Caution

Palantir Technologies, Inc. (PLTR) has had a strong run in the first half of the year, taking the honors of being the best–performing S&P 500 stock.

The stock ended the first half of the year at $136.32, a whopping gain of over 80%. Its year-to-date performance outshines the 5.5% gain for both the S&P 500 and the tech-focused Nasdaq Composite. It currently traded off its all-time high of $148.21, which it hit last week. 

Palantir is among the four technology stocks in the top 10 S&P 500 best-performers for the year-to-date period, the others being Seagate (4th position), Super Micro (6th spot), and Uber Technologies (8th position).

The Alex Karp-led company has been riding the crest of the artificial intelligence (AI) revolution. The company’s AI-enabled data analytics platform has seen widespread adoption among government and enterprise clients, with company bagging prestigious contracts for its foundry and AIP platform. 

The stock surged up over 4% on Monday after the company announced a strategic partnership with Accenture (ACN), naming Accenture Federal as a "Palantir preferred implementation partner" for U.S. federal government customers.

On Stocktwits, retail sentiment toward Palantir stock remained ‘neutral’ (47/100) by early Tuesday, with the message volume at ‘high’ levels.

Calling Palantir another Nvidia, a bullish watcher asked not to mess with the stock. They also had a note of warning to shorts: “$PLTR Shorts are screwed. They never learn a lesson,” they said. 

Some also braced for the stock extending the gains and breaking above $140 on Tuesday.

Another user, who is bearish, based his negative opinion on a Tesla sell-off forcing traders to sell Palantir as well.

Not all are on the bullish bandwagon. The Koyfin-compiled consensus analysts’ price target for the Palantir stock is $101.32, implying downside potential of nearly 27%.

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