The Rising Influence of Rising Affluence

[Biowatch]

S&P 500's gains mostly from just five companies

https://www.axios.com/2023/06/01/sp500-tech-companies-stock-price

The big picture: The S&P 500 is up 8.9% so far in 2023, or 9.7% including dividends. But the lion's share of that increase is due to the surging prices of a few of the largest companies.

State of play: The big five that are responsible for the vast majority of the stock market's 2023 gains are Apple (up 36% this year), Microsoft (37%), Alphabet (39%), Amazon (44%), and current stock market darling Nvidia, which has surged 159% on AI-related excitement.

Without them, the overall market (including dividend payments) would be up just 1.5% this year, according to data provided by Howard Silverblatt, senior index analyst at S&P Dow Jones Indices.

If you also remove the contributions from the two other largest tech companies — Meta (up 120% in 2023) and Tesla (66%) — the S&P 500 would be slightly underwater for the year, Silverblatt says.

…The flurry of excitement over "generative AI" has supercharged shares of Microsoft, Google parent Alphabet, and Nvidia, which have close ties to the technology.