In the 1960 western The Magnificent Seven, a group of seven gunfighters protect a village from bandits. Only three survive to ride out of town at the end of the movie. The odds look much better for the seven tech companies recently dubbed the magnificent seven after dominating US stock markets in 2023. But there are problems that could ambush some of these companies in 2024.
Apple, Alphabet, Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, Tesla and Nvidia have driven a rally in US stocks in 2023. They now make up nearly a third of the S&P 500 measure of the largest listed US companies, which has risen more than 20% since January. These tech stocks had provided shareholders with a whopping 71% return by mid-November while the other 493 names added just 6%.
This impressive performance led Bank of America analyst Michael Hartnett to name these companies the magnificent seven earlier this year. Goldman Sachs soon followed, calling their massive outperformance the “defining feature” of the equity market in 2023.
