(Dec 3): The S&P 500 is back within spitting distance of an all-time high, and this time Big Tech isn’t leading the rebound.
Eli Lilly & Co, Cardinal Health Inc and Biogen Inc are among the top 10 performers in the S&P 500 since Oct 28, the last time the index closed at a record. In contrast, the S&P 500 Information Technology index is down 4.2% since then, with bigger losses coming from Magnificent Seven stocks like Nvidia Corp and Microsoft Corp.
The moves suggest that investor are still skittish about the artificial intelligence (AI) trade as concerns linger about valuations and whether all the heavy spending on computing power will pay off with profits. But the gains in other industries points to an underlying confidence about the broader US economy, especially as speculation grows that the US Federal Reserve will keep cutting interest rates.
“Leadership is ready to rotate,” wrote RBC Capital Markets strategists including Lori Calvasina. “Jitters on the AI trade, the Magnificent Seven, and market concentration have run high in our meetings with institutional investors over the past few months.”
While there’s been a handful of tech winners recently, like Teradyne Inc and Western Digital Corp, the powerhouse stocks of the Magnificent Seven have struggled. Meta Platforms Inc is down 14% since the S&P 500’s Oct 28 peak. Only Alphabet Inc has performed well.
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After the April sell-off, sparked by the tariffs announced on “Liberation Day”, tech stocks led the way back up for the S&P 500. The technology sector had a record weighting in the S&P 500 of about 36% on Oct 29. Valuations remains near the top of a 20-year range, with a forward price-earnings ratio of about 28 times.
Still, technology firms continue to show strong earnings growth as companies ramp up spending on data centres. That’s likely to limit how far the rotation can run, said Calvasina’s team, unless profits elsewhere turn out to be more impressive.
“A shift in earnings dynamics is still needed for this transition to have significant duration,” they wrote.
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