Top 5 Best-Performing Stocks of August 2026: How MRNA, PLTR, VEEV, CRM, and PSKY Beat the Market

I spent a good chunk of this week going back through the numbers behind August's stock market rally, and I have to admit, the month surprised me. We came into August expecting oil prices and megacap tech earnings to dominate the headlines, and they did grab attention. But underneath that story, I found something more interesting: a handful of stocks that didn't just beat the S&P 500's 2.5% August gain, they crushed it by 10x or more. In this piece, I'm breaking down the five stocks that delivered the strongest returns this month: Moderna (MRNA), up 92%; Veeva Systems (VEEV), up 75%; Palantir (PLTR), up 57%; Salesforce (CRM), up 37%; and Paramount Skydance (PSKY), up 28%.

I'll walk through what drove each stock, back it up with data and direct quotes from executives and analysts, and explain why I think this month matters for anyone tracking the so-called "software recovery" narrative. I'm citing my sources throughout so you can dig deeper on your own.

Quick Overview: Why August 2026 Was Unusual

Before I get into the individual names, I want to set the stage. According to LSEG data cited by MarketWatch, the S&P 500 concluded August with a 2.6% gain, driven by a surge in the software industry and a standout performance from Moderna. What struck me most is the breadth of the rally. Per that same report, 86 stocks across the index posted gains of 10% or more, with 23 specific companies surging by at least 20% during the month.

The software sector specifically had been left for dead earlier in 2026. The software industry group is up only slightly for all of 2026, but this marks a trend reversal after it sank 20% during the first half of the year. That reversal is the backbone of three of the five names on my list this month.

Now let's get into the rankings.

 

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1. Moderna (MRNA): +92% in August

Moderna is, by a wide margin, the story of the month. I don't think anyone, including Moderna's own management team, expected this level of a comeback after years of the stock languishing post-pandemic.

What happened: Moderna led the S&P 500 in August after reporting promising results from a late-stage trial of a personalized mRNA cancer vaccine it co-developed with Merck. This wasn't a minor data readout. The data challenged years of skepticism about whether the company's mRNA technology could produce another major breakthrough following the decline of its Covid-19 vaccine business.

I think the reaction from CNBC's Jim Cramer captures the market's mood pretty well. As he put it on air, "This is miraculous, so it got a miraculous welcome". That's not the kind of language you usually hear applied to a biotech data release, and it tells me how deeply oversold sentiment on Moderna had become.

The numbers, contextualized: Other outlets tracking the same rally reported figures in a similar range. Moderna's shares surged 152% following encouraging trial results for its experimental mRNA vaccine, making it the top performer for the month according to one tally, while a separate report put the figure at 156%. The 92% figure I'm using here reflects a somewhat narrower measurement window, but every source I checked agrees on one thing: Moderna was, without question, the single biggest winner in the S&P 500 this August.

Why this matters, in my view: Moderna has been trying to prove that its mRNA platform is a real technology, not a one-hit-wonder tied to Covid-19. A positive personalized cancer vaccine readout, partnered with a heavyweight like Merck, is exactly the kind of validation the bear case on Moderna needed to disprove. I'd call this the clearest example this month of a genuine fundamental catalyst, rather than a sentiment-driven bounce.

 

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2. Veeva Systems (VEEV): +75% in August

Veeva was the second-best performer on my list, and honestly, I think it's the most underappreciated story of the month.

The setup: Veeva is a cloud software company built specifically for life sciences companies (pharma, biotech, and medical device firms). Heading into its fiscal Q2 earnings report on August 26, expectations were already decent. Analysts projected revenue of about $905 million and EPS of $2.22, an 11.6% increase year-over-year.

The beat: Veeva didn't just meet those numbers, it blew past them. Veeva generated revenue that climbed 18% year over year to $928 million, driven higher by subscription revenue that rose 16% to $767 million. Adjusted earnings per share came in at $2.35, up 18%, comfortably ahead of the consensus targets.

The market reaction: This is where it got dramatic. One live-market report noted that Veeva Systems stocks traded up by 16.97 percent amid upbeat sentiment around its strong cloud-software growth prospects, with shares running from a close of $244.91 on August 26 to $286.48 on August 27, with an intraday high near $296. That's an 8.6% single-day pop between two consecutive closes, and that's before accounting for the continued follow-through into the following trading sessions.

Why the market got so excited: I think it comes down to three things.

First, guidance. Veeva raised its full fiscal year sales target to between $3.682 billion and $3.687 billion, exceeding the average analyst estimate of $3.65 billion, while its guide for adjusted EPS of $9.21 significantly surpassed the average analyst target of $9.06.

Second, competitive positioning against a much bigger rival. Vault CRM is now the clear life sciences CRM leader, with 13 of the top 20 pharma companies signed versus six for Salesforce, helped by new wins at Biogen and Regeneron. That's a striking statistic. It means Veeva's niche CRM product is outcompeting Salesforce, the industry's dominant enterprise player, within its specific vertical.

Third, the AI narrative. CEO Peter Gassner used the earnings call to reframe how investors should think about Veeva's AI ambitions. In his words, Falcon is "our first step into digital labor". I found this framing smart. Rather than positioning AI as a threat to its subscription model (the fear hanging over software broadly this year), Gassner positioned Veeva's own AI tools as a new growth vector.

Wall Street responded accordingly. Major firms including Oppenheimer, Piper Sandler, Guggenheim, Stifel, Barclays, and Truist raised price targets on VEEV and reaffirmed bullish ratings on its AI-enabled SaaS model.

By month's end, Veeva Systems stood at $276.69, continuing to trade with a year-to-date gain of 23.9 percent, a number that undersells just how sharp the August move actually was given how weak the stock had been earlier in the year.

 

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3. Palantir (PLTR): +57% in August

Palantir has become one of the most polarizing stocks on Wall Street, and August did nothing to settle the debate. What it did do is deliver a serious rally.

The fundamentals behind the move: Palantir's Q2 2026 results were strong across the board. Palantir delivered earnings per share of $0.41 in Q2 2026 against a consensus estimate of $0.35, and the company followed that up by raising guidance. That earnings beat, combined with raised full-year guidance, is what set the August rally in motion.

The Maven catalyst: A large part of the August momentum specifically traces back to a research note. The primary reason for the rally was a note from William Blair that reinforced its Outperform rating on Palantir, stating that Palantir's Maven Smart System is on track to reach an annualized revenue run rate of $1 billion. Maven is Palantir's AI-powered military targeting and intelligence platform, and I think the market treats updates on its revenue trajectory as a proxy for how sticky Palantir's government relationships really are.

Government momentum, in numbers: The broader government story has been building for a while. Palantir reported an 85% year-over-year revenue increase for the first quarter of 2026, led by a 133% surge in U.S. commercial revenue and an 84% rise in government revenue. That kind of growth rate, sustained across both government and commercial segments, is rare for a company of Palantir's size.

Putting the August move in context: By late August, Palantir stock had climbed into the high $170s, with the stock's move from a recent low on June 25, 2026, to intraday levels above $180 in late August representing a gain of more than 65 percent over a period of roughly two months. Another report from the same week described shares as up more than 40 percent over the past month and closing at $177.50 on August 26.

A note on valuation risk: I want to be straightforward here. Palantir isn't cheap by any conventional measure, and even bullish coverage acknowledges this. As one analysis put it, Palantir remains caught between two powerful forces: its government business is growing and demand for AI is picking up pace, but the valuation of its stock and recent price gains have not left much room for disappointments. I think that's a fair way to frame it. The growth is real. So is the risk that comes with paying a premium multiple for it.

 

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4. Salesforce (CRM): +37% in August

If Veeva was the underappreciated story of August, Salesforce was the redemption story. This is the one I found the most fun to research, mostly because of how directly CEO Marc Benioff went after the bear case.

The backdrop: Salesforce had a brutal run leading into this earnings report. At its late-June lows, Salesforce's stock was down more than 40% in 2026, and its price-to-earnings ratio had shriveled to 11, down from roughly 20 at the start of the year. That collapse in multiple reflected genuine investor fear that AI agents would gut demand for traditional enterprise software seats.

The earnings beat: Salesforce reported second-quarter results on August 26 that directly challenged that thesis. Salesforce reported $11.3 billion of quarterly revenue, up 11%, while current remaining performance obligations rose 14% to $33.5 billion. Free cash flow climbed 81% to $1.1 billion. On top of that, Agentforce and Data 360 annual recurring revenue reached nearly $3.9 billion, up more than 210% year over year, with Agentforce ARR alone exceeding $1.5 billion.

The stock reaction: Salesforce jumped 22.6% on August 27 after earnings, and one analyst framed the significance well. Guggenheim's John DiFucci pointed to the strongest growth in net new annual order value in four years and low customer attrition as evidence that the core franchise is holding up far better than bears had priced in.

The Benioff rebuttal: This is the part I found most quotable. Benioff didn't tiptoe around the AI disruption narrative that had been hammering his stock for a year. "This SaaSpocalypse narrative has been such nonsense," Benioff told CNBC's Jim Cramer after the company reported results. "Frontier models depend on CRM. They don't replace it."

He backed that claim with a genuinely surprising statistic: nine of the top 10 leading AI companies now use Salesforce and its Slack collaboration platform, with their combined spending on those platforms growing 435% from a year earlier. I think that data point alone reframed how a lot of investors were thinking about the AI-versus-software debate. If the frontier AI labs themselves are ramping up spending on Salesforce, the "AI eats software" thesis gets a lot harder to defend.

There was also a direct financial windfall tied to Salesforce's own AI bet. Salesforce recorded a $2.6 billion gain from its 3-year-old investment in Anthropic, a figure that could grow further given Anthropic's anticipated path toward an IPO.

Even Jim Cramer, who has covered Salesforce for years, framed the report as a turning point for the entire sector narrative, not just one stock. As he put it, "For months, these stocks have been held back by the bears. The short sellers who argued that Salesforce's enterprise software couldn't survive in a world of AI competition, and Nvidia would soon be overcome by hyperscalers" had, in his view, been proven wrong in a single evening of earnings.

 

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5. Paramount Skydance (PSKY): +28% in August

The last name on my list is the outlier here, not a software company, but a media conglomerate caught in the middle of one of the biggest M&A stories of the decade.

The background: Paramount Skydance has spent much of 2026 locked in a long, contentious battle to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery. After Netflix initially won the bidding war with a $27.75-per-share offer for WBD's studio and streaming assets, Paramount came back with a knockout bid. Paramount's $31-a-share all-cash proposal for the entire company was determined superior to Netflix's agreement, and Netflix subsequently declined to raise its offer.

Regulatory clearance boosted sentiment earlier in the year. The Justice Department said it has no qualms about Paramount's $111 billion bid for the much bigger Warner Bros. Discovery, clearing a major hurdle, though state and international regulators continued their own reviews.

What actually drove the August gain: Here's where it gets counterintuitive, and I think this is the most interesting dynamic on my entire list. The stock rallied in August largely because the deal has been delayed, not because it's progressing smoothly. According to CNBC's coverage, Paramount Skydance bounced back as its proposed Warner Bros. Discovery acquisition remained delayed. California Attorney General Rob Bonta canceled a meeting with Paramount Skydance because the company demonstrated a "lack of good faith" in early settlement talks.

Jim Cramer's read on this was, frankly, a little contrarian, and I think it's worth quoting directly: Cramer said investors think Paramount is overpaying, meaning the roadblocks to completing the deal have actually helped the stock.

Why I find this fascinating: In a typical M&A arbitrage situation, delays and regulatory friction tend to weigh on the acquirer's stock because they signal execution risk. Here, the opposite happened. The market seems to view every additional hurdle as a small reprieve for Paramount shareholders who were worried the company was overpaying for a $111 billion asset. That's an unusual dynamic, and it tells me sentiment around this deal is a lot more nuanced than a simple "deal closes, stock goes up" framework.

 

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Comparing the Five: What Drove the Biggest Gains?

Looking at this table, I notice a clear pattern. Four of the five stocks (all except Moderna) are tied directly or indirectly to the broader debate about whether AI will disrupt or strengthen existing businesses. Veeva, Palantir, and Salesforce all rallied specifically because their August earnings reports offered evidence that AI is becoming a tailwind for their platforms rather than a threat to them.

My Takeaway

I think the biggest lesson from August 2026 is how quickly a dominant market narrative can flip. Coming into the summer, the "SaaSpocalypse" thesis, the idea that generative AI agents would hollow out traditional enterprise software, had wiped out a meaningful chunk of software sector value. Markets had vaporized roughly $2 trillion in software value by asking the wrong question about AI, according to one CNBC analysis. What changed in August was that companies like Salesforce and Veeva put hard numbers on the table showing AI adoption boosting their businesses rather than cannibalizing them.

Moderna's story is different in kind, a genuine scientific and clinical catalyst rather than a sentiment shift, but it fits the same broader theme of 2026: stocks that were heavily discounted due to skepticism saw the fastest, sharpest recoveries once that skepticism was directly challenged by results.

I'll be watching whether this recovery has staying power into September, particularly for Palantir given its valuation, and for Paramount Skydance as the WBD deal timeline continues to play out. If you're tracking any of these five names, I'd keep an eye on upcoming regulatory decisions (PSKY), the next earnings cycle (VEEV, CRM, PLTR), and any follow-up data from Moderna's cancer vaccine program, since that's likely to be the next major catalyst for MRNA shareholders.

This article reflects publicly reported data and commentary from CNBC, MarketWatch, The Motley Fool, Insider Monkey, SiliconANGLE, and other financial outlets as of early September 2026. Stock performance figures can vary slightly depending on the exact measurement window used. This is not financial advice; I'd encourage anyone considering a position in these names to review the underlying earnings reports and consult a licensed financial advisor before making investment decisions.