WHICH firms have emerged as the winners from the chaos of the past three years? Perhaps the most unusual period for business in a generation began in the spring of 2020, when lockdowns brought parts of production to a standstill. A deep but brief recession was followed by a frantic recovery. Then came inflation. A world economy already in the grip of a high-speed cycle is now experiencing the fastest increase in interest rates since the 1980s. Graham Secker of Morgan Stanley, a bank, argues that the policy response to Covid-19 has shocked the economy out of secular stagnation – the slow-growth, low-inflation malaise preceding the pandemic – and marks a new era.

It should be no surprise that the business environment has changed profoundly. To take stock of this, we have examined which American industries and firms have performed best over the past three years, based on stock market performance. The headline is that market leadership has flipped dramatically. The digital hares have given ground to old-economy tortoises. Big Tech is no longer running away with the race. Firms once derided as obsolete and sluggish suddenly look vital again.

We have chosen Jan 1, 2020 as the starting date for our analysis. Since then, the S&P 500 index of leading American shares has risen by 25 per cent. The best-performing industry sector is energy, followed by information technology (IT). Healthcare has done well, as might be expected during a public health crisis: the second-best-performing company in the S&P 500 is Moderna, a leading vaccine maker, whose share price is up by no less than 800 per cent.