The stock market is in an uptrend. That’s good, but the leadership is very narrow. It’s starting to look a lot like 2021 in the stock market. Tech stocks are dragging all the indexes up, just like 2021. No one seems to be watching, but after a rocky few weeks the S & P 500 is back in uptrend mode. The technicians seem to be happy, because the S & P is again showing a pattern of higher highs and higher lows that began in October. Most of this has been driven by the stunning performance in megacap tech. The three companies in the $1 trillion (and above) market cap club that have the largest weightings in the S & P have seen astonishing gains in the past three months: The $1 trillion club Megacap tech this quarter: Apple up 22% Microsoft up 15% Alphabet up 14% The second tier of megacap tech has done even better. Megacap tech this quarter: NVIDIA up 80% Meta up 67% Tesla up 53% Amazon up 16% Those seven megacap tech companies are responsible for most of the gains for the S & P 500 this year. With the S & P up 3.4% this year, the companies are responsible for a 5% gain in the S & P, meaning the rest of the 493 or so stocks are underperforming, Mike O’Rourke from Jones Trading noted in a letter to clients. Some of this, of course, is due to excitement over ChatGPT, which has particularly boosted NVIDIA and Microsoft, and perhaps also Amazon, Google and Meta Platforms. Is ChatGPT worth that much excitement? “We agree with the disruptive importance of generative AI, but how much should a $10 Billion investment move a multi-Trillion Dollar company?,” O’Rourke asked.
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