Palantir Technologies (NASDAQ: PLTR) emerged as one of the biggest winners of 2024. Shares of the artificial intelligence (AI) and data analytics software company skyrocketed 340%. Palantir's additions to the S&P 500 and Nasdaq-100 indexes helped fuel investor excitement.

U.S. stock indexes are rising Monday to recover more of the holiday-season slide that bridged the new year. The S&P 500 was 0.8% higher in early trading and on track for a second straight gain following five straight losses,

NVIDIA (NASDAQ: NVDA) is still the most important stock after two-plus years of dominating the stock market. Its GPU technology unlocked the door to AI, and now NVIDIA is capitalizing on it using a full-stack method.