It's a tight race. And markets have yet to close for the day.
But it looks like this week's top performer on the S&P/ASX 200 Index (ASX: XJO) is… drum roll please… Appen Ltd (ASX: APX).
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Appen leads the ASX 200 for the week
With today's intraday gain of 2.4% factored in, the Appen share price is up 12.6% this week (at the time of writing).
This week's performance will come as welcome news to longer-term shareholders of the machine learning and artificial intelligence company.
That's because Appen shares have been on a largely downward slide since the ASX 200 tech darling hit an all-time high closing price of $43.66 on 26 August. This means that, despite the banner week it has just enjoyed, the Appen share price remains 59% below its record highs.
What's been putting the Appen share price under pressure?
To some extent, the recent falls in the Appen share price shouldn't come as a surprise.
Not after it soared 150% from 23 March through to 26 August. And not when the wider tech market has come under pressure from fear of rising inflation and the potential for interest rates to rise from their current rock bottom levels.
These same fears put the NASDAQ-100 (NASDAQ: NDX) into a technical correction, with the tech-heavy index falling 11% from 12 February through to 8 March. Like Appen shares, the Nasdaq 100 bottomed out on Monday. In the past three days, it's gained 5.1%.
Following this week's gains, the Appen share price is trading at $17.79. That gives the ASX 200 technology share a market capitalisation of around $2.2 billion.
Appen pays an annual dividend yield of 0.6%, 50% franked.
