Why these 2 stocks have shockingly blown away Nvidia

This is The Takeaway from today’s Morning Brief, which you can sign up to receive in your inbox every morning along with:

Two of the hottest stocks of 2025 aren’t what you think.

They have nothing to do with Meta (META), Nvidia (NVDA), Google (GOOGL, GOOG), Amazon (AMZN), Netflix (NFLX), Apple (AAPL), Microsoft (MSFT), or Tesla (TSLA). They also have nothing to do with bitcoin (BTC-USD), AI, or humanoid robots.

But they have everything to do with the real state of the US economy.

The two names: Dollar Tree (DLTR) and Dollar General (DG), whose stock prices have gained 55% and 65% year to date, respectively. Nvidia’s stock is up 35% on the year.

What each of these two retailers — which operate thousands of stores across the country and serve as vital consumption points for households — said on their earnings days blew me away this week.

Dollar General’s third quarter same-store sales rose 2.5%. Dollar Tree’s same-store sales gained 4.2%. For perspective, Target’s same-store sales fell 3.8% in the most recent quarter.

Dollar Tree said it captured 3 million new shoppers on top of a customer base that already totaled 100 million.

“Approximately 60% of these incremental shoppers came from higher-income households, those earning over $100,000, 30% from middle-income households, those earning between $60,000 to $100,000, with the rest from lower-income households, those earning under $60,000,” Dollar Tree CEO Michael Creedon said of the gain.