10 Stocks to be Thankful For This Thanksgiving

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving and most Thanksgiving get-togethers include the classic question, “what are you thankful for?” If you’re investor and you’ve held any of these stocks since the beginning of the year, while others talk about health and happiness, you might mention your portfolio.

Here are a few of the top performing large cap stocks of 2013.

Icahn Enterprises IEP

You know this company as the firm ran by billionaire investor, Carl Icahn. Love him or hate him, you can’t argue with his results. Icahn Enterprises is up 143 percent year to date.

Micron Technology MU

If you’re a fan of CNBC’s Fast Money, you’ve seen TV personality Regis Philbin talk of his allegiance to this stock and for good reason. Micron is up 258 percent year to date.  This $10 billion company manufactures and markets semiconductor components including memory chips.

Netflix NFLX

Remember 2012 when Netflix was left for dead? If you picked it up in August of 2012, you’re up about 400 percent but this year alone the stock is up 286 percent. (One of those value investors that bought when the stock was cheap was Carl Icahn.)

Related: Netflix Could Face Competition with New Amazon Streaming Service

TripAdvisor TRIP

Some stocks fly under the radar posting big gains while few people notice. TripAdvisor is up 99 percent year to date. A competitor to Yelp YELP, the company’s stock is currently in a basing pattern that could lead to even more gains as the stock takes a pause.

Best Buy BBY

Yes, you read that right. An example of a retailer decimated by online retailers like Amazon AMZN, Best Buy was considered the next Barnes and Noble BKS—a dinosaur that was sure to close its doors any day. Instead, the company reinvented itself including a price-match policy with that led to gains of 235 Percent.

Tesla TSLA

Tesla was up more than 400 percent this year before investors began taking profits in the name. Currently, it’s up 240 percent—still quite impressive for a startup electric car maker.

Delta Air Lines DAL

Never buy an airline stock unless you’re trying to lose money. That was the prevailing wisdom for years but airline stocks took off this year. Delta printed gains of 138 percent. Others like Southwest LUV are up 77 percent and US Airways LCC, 70 percent.

Boston Scientific BSX

Some areas of health care had a banner year as well. Boston Scientific logged gains of 100 percent while Celgene CELG and Gilead Sciences GILD are up triple digits.

Disclosure: At the time of this writing, Tim Parker had no position in the companies mentioned.