With 3Q 2026 behind us, it’s time to look at the pricing trends in the stocks of publicly owned electrical manufacturers, distributors and contractors. I pulled the pricing data from just a few days before the technical last day of 3Q because of business travel, but this data will provide a clear picture of the trends. Since the beginning of the year, the overall trend is quite healthy, with more than 20 of the stocks EM’s editors track posting YTD returns of better than 20%. Let’s take a look at some of the top performers
Electrical manufacturers. Sixteen publicly held electrical equipment manufacturers beat all three market indices YTD, which were led by the Nasdaq’s +15.6% increase YTD and  the S&P 500’s +11.6% increase. The Dow Jones settled in at +7.3% YTD. There were some surprising leaders amongst electrical manufacturers in the YTD data — Dialight, Mersen, Hammond Power Solutions and Littelfuse. Dialight (+72.9%); Mersen (+70.9%); and Hammond Power Solutions (+70.2%) were all up more than +70% year-to-date (YTD). Littelfuse was up an impressive +69%.
Distributors. The big gainers among distributors stocks were actually two companies from outside the electrical space that I include in our electrical stock index for benchmarking purposes — Avnet and Arrow. These two electronics distributors both saw their stock share prices skyrocket better than 100% since early January. Closer to home in the electrical space, WESCO posted impressive YTD growth of +45.9% in its share prices. Fastenal and Grainger both topped the market indices with gains of better than +20%.
Contractors. If you have been following the surge in contractor stocks over the past several years, you won’t be surprised to find two very familiar names at the top of the list:  Comfort Systems, the large electromechanical contractor, which had a +75.1% increase in its share prices and Quanta, up +23.8% YTD.  EMCOR was up a healthy +23.8%.
When you look at a combined table of all of the stocks of the publicly held manufacturers, distributors and contractors (see page 2), it quickly becomes apparent that many of the core electrical stocks with returns of better than +20% since January have one thing in common — they are active participants in two of the major trends now driving much of the growth  in the electrical construction scene right now —  the explosive growth of data centers and the revitalization and expansion of the electrical grid.  nVent, Quanta, Vertiv, Atkore, Generac, Wesco, GE Vernova, Eaton, ABB, Emcor and Schneider all made the cut on this list of the hottest electrical stocks in 3Q 2026.