“Queen City” Charlotte was the king of the stock market in 2025

Lithium and steel outperformed AI in 2025, at least when it comes to CNBC’s own Power City Index.

The Power City Indexes (PCI) were created 10 years ago. The “Index” is comprised of the top 11 or 12 companies by market capitalization from 36 different cities and metropolitan areas across the United States. Stocks are equally weighted in each index and tracked throughout the year on FactSet.

PCI is an easy and special way to find out which cities or metropolitan areas are “winning” in the stock market. We feature them all year long on CNBC and also bring them to you on CNBC Pro.

They are for fun, but we take them seriously.

Here’s how: We use S&P CapitalIQ’s stock screening feature to determine city locations based on a company’s headquarters location. Even if a company has many people in different regions, the location of its headquarters is important for PCI. Use the median return of all 11 or 12 stocks. And when a company is acquired, its stock remains in the index until it is delisted, after which it is replaced by the next largest company.

The procedure is finished. Have fun and take a look at the median revenue for each region.

The third best metropolitan area for the stock market in 2025 was around our nation’s capital.

Publicly traded companies in Washington, D.C., including those based in the city itself and those based in the surrounding suburbs of Virginia and Maryland, had a strong year. Defense contractors were an aggressive play for investors. RTX (RTX), General dynamics (GD), Northrop Grumman (NOC) and Boeing (BA)) everything pops out.

It wasn’t that long ago that all of these companies were included in indexes in different cities, but in the last decade or so, they’ve moved closer to the Pentagon and halls of power.

Silicon Valley ranks second in the 2025 Power City Index ranking.

Given the promise and hype surrounding AI, perhaps the only real surprise here is that metropolitan markets haven’t won it all. Still, it’s been a great year for investors up and down the U.S. 101 corridor.

The big winner in 2025 will be the Queen City of Charlotte, North Carolina.

Charlotte PCI rose more than 22%, outperforming big tech stocks by just over 0.5%. No stocks in Charlotte doubled, but the seven largest stocks rose more than 20%, pushing up the median return. Lithium miners make big profits Albemarle (ALB)aerospace company Curtis Wright (CW), SPX Tech (SPXC), Nucore (NU) and Bank of America (BAC) These are the secret sauce to Charlotte’s success this year and will lead the region to victory in 2025 (representing the strength of NASCAR’s presence in the region).

Congratulations to Charlotte on winning the 2025 Power City Index and a Happy New Year! We look forward to visiting Charlotte in the near future. Maybe even a Panthers playoff game.

And while we want to stay positive, we would be remiss to not note that “Big D” stands for “dud” in 2025. The Power City Index’s worst performing city was Dallas, Texas, with a median return of -10%. There are a lot of good things happening in Dallas, but the stock market wasn’t one of them this year.

I look forward to following the country and region’s stock markets again next year. Maybe whichever region wins will be featured on CNBC TV.