Outlook 2024
Powered by spectacular gains in the so called “Magnificent Seven,” the stock market delivered surprisingly strong gains in 2023, with the S&P 500, Dow Jones Industrial Average and NASDAQ Composite sporting respective gains of 24.23%, 13.70% and 43.42% for the year. After a dismal 2022 took the same indices down -19.44%, -8.78% and -33.10% respectively, these important market barometers are now flattish over the last two years. Indicative of the extraordinary concentration of this year’s gains in a limited number of mega-cap technology stocks, an astounding 72% of S&P 500 constituents underperformed the index in 2023. Indeed, the approximate 75% collective jump in Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, Nvidia, Tesla and Meta trounced the average stock and the Magnificent Seven now account for almost 30% of the market capitalization of the S&P 500, the highest concentration of any seven companies on record.