US "Big Seven" Dominates the Stock Market Analyst: Blindly Bearish on 2024 is not a Wise Choice

Zhitong App has learned that, boosted by the AI boom, large tech stocks dominated the US stock market last year. With AI still attracting investors and expectations of a Fed rate cut growing, most analysts are unwilling to be bearish on the prospects of these stocks in 2024.

In the past 12 months, the "Big Seven" of the US stock market - Apple (AAPL.US), Microsoft (MSFT.US), Alphabet (GOOGL.US), Amazon (AMZN.US), NVIDIA (NVDA.US), Tesla, and Meta (META.US) - have all achieved astonishing gains.

Among them, NVIDIA led the pack with a 240% increase. The chip manufacturer's valuation reached $1 trillion for the first time in May last year, doubling CEO Jensen Huang's personal wealth. Meta and Tesla also rebounded from a sluggish year, achieving triple-digit returns.

As a whole, these seven large tech companies have outperformed the other components of the S&P 500 index. According to Goldman Sachs data, as of the end of November last year, the "Big Seven" had accumulated a 71% increase over 11 months, while the rest of the benchmark index only rose 6%.

David Kostin, Chief US Equity Strategist at the Wall Street bank, predicts that these seven stocks will continue to deliver better returns for shareholders than the other components of the S&P 500 index next year.

In a research report last month, he stated, "Our base case forecast suggests that in 2024, large tech stocks will continue to outperform the rest of the components of the S&P 500 index."

One obvious reason for the optimism about the "Big Seven" is that these stocks seem to be in a unique position to enjoy significant profit growth due to the rise of AI.

For example, NVIDIA dominates the GPU market, while Microsoft has established a potentially lucrative partnership with OpenAI, and Google has launched the Gemini AI model this month. Other giants like Apple and Amazon also appear to be considering increasing their spending on AI.

Kathleen Brooks, Founder of Minerva Analysis, said in a recent interview, "AI will continue to be a dominant theme in 2024 - we've only scratched the surface. You can see that NVIDIA and Microsoft are already leading the way in this field, and these tech giants have ample cash - they have abundant resources and huge amounts of capital."

Meanwhile, Powell recently hinted that the Fed may start cutting rates next year, which has led investors to anticipate a broader market rally - a situation that could further benefit the "Big Seven" in terms of total market value.

In response to Powell's comments, Kostin raised his forecast for the S&P 500 index to 5,100 points, joining Savita Subramanian of Bank of America and Binky Chadha of Deutsche Bank in predicting that the benchmark index will reach a new all-time high in 2024.Brooks said, "In the end, if you want to pick stocks, you should choose these stocks."

"What is the market? They are the market," she added, "It doesn't seem like a good idea to bet against the seven giants."