Denso, Renesas Help Rocket D20 Stock Index to New Height

Fifteen price gainers, led largely by Renesas and Denso, powered the Driverless Transportation Weekly Stock Index (D20) to a new all-time high this week.

The D20 gained 1.8 percent to close at 260.10. It easily outperformed the Dow, which gained 0.4 percent, and the S&P 500, which added 0.3 percent to close at 2587.84.

The D20 is now up over 50 percent since the beginning of 2017.

Three stocks drove most of the D20’s rise this week-Renesas Electronics (TYO:6723), Denso (DNZOY) and Volkswagen (VLKPY).

News broke this week that Renesas will provide chips to Denso and Toyota (TM) for Toyota’s driverless car program. Toyota has set a goal of 2020 for market availability of its self-driving vehicles.

Renesas Electronic’s stock price jumped 7.6 percent to close at ¥1449 per share while Denso’s ADR gained 7.4 percent to end the week at $28.

For the third consecutive week, Volkswagen’s ADR made positive progress. It rose 7.4 percent this week to close at $37.83. It announced October’s U.S. sales were up 11.9 percent compared to October of 2016.

Visit the Driverless Transportation D20 Stock Index page to learn more about it and its component stocks.

Up-and-Comers:

It has been a good year for investing in Driverless Technology startups, according to a new report put out by TechCrunch. In a report posted on Nov. 4 (see below), TechCrunch states that 2017 investments, already totaling at $1.4 billion, are already more than double the total for all of 2016. According to TechCrunch, Silicon Valley is the most popular place for these investments, followed by Israel.