S&P 500 Index Sets Record High, Thanks to 'AI-Driven Frenzy' and Tech Stocks (msn.com) 46
The S&P 500 index tracks 500 of the largest companies listed on U.S. stock exchanges, according to Wikipedia.
And Friday that index "hit an all-time closing high," reports the Washington Post, "reflecting the staggering gains of a coterie of Big Tech firms against the backdrop of a surprisingly stable economy." The broad-based index closed at 4,839.81 — up more than 1 percent for the day — surpassing the previous closing record set in January of 2022. The stock market surged upward in the final quarter of 2023 as evidence gathered that the [U.S.] economy has not tipped into recession territory, despite the Federal Reserve's campaign to raise interest rates. At the same time analysts point to an AI-driven frenzy on Wall Street that rivals the dot-com boom of the late '90s, when investors sought to capitalize on the transformative gains brought by the early internet.
A booming S&P 500 is a welcome sign for the millions of Americans who invest in the index through retirement accounts. Investors in 2022 had about $5.7 trillion in assets passively indexed to the S&P 500 and another $5.7 trillion in funds that use it as a benchmark comparison, according to S&P Global. Voters' feelings about the stock market and economy could affect the 2024 election...
Tech companies, including a few names heavily associated with artificial intelligence work, led the S&P 500's gains. Seven of the largest tech stocks known as the "Magnificent Seven" — Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, Nvidia, Tesla and Meta — increased 75 percent on average in 2023 and represented 30 percent of the index's total market value at the end of 2023. "AI is the new dot-com," said Michael Farr of Farr, Miller and Washington. "It's the new magic that is going to change the world that we don't really understand yet. But we all understand it's very powerful." Those seven stocks made up around half of the S&P 500's growth last year. Nvidia, whose high-performance chips have become popular for AI uses, had the best year of the bunch, at one point gaining nearly $190 billion in value overnight, a 24 percent gain.
In the last 12 months, the index has risen 21.83%.
The article notes that "Although the rest of the market has lagged Big Tech, analysts say promising economic data from recent months has boosted optimism about the broader economy."
And Friday that index "hit an all-time closing high," reports the Washington Post, "reflecting the staggering gains of a coterie of Big Tech firms against the backdrop of a surprisingly stable economy." The broad-based index closed at 4,839.81 — up more than 1 percent for the day — surpassing the previous closing record set in January of 2022. The stock market surged upward in the final quarter of 2023 as evidence gathered that the [U.S.] economy has not tipped into recession territory, despite the Federal Reserve's campaign to raise interest rates. At the same time analysts point to an AI-driven frenzy on Wall Street that rivals the dot-com boom of the late '90s, when investors sought to capitalize on the transformative gains brought by the early internet.
A booming S&P 500 is a welcome sign for the millions of Americans who invest in the index through retirement accounts. Investors in 2022 had about $5.7 trillion in assets passively indexed to the S&P 500 and another $5.7 trillion in funds that use it as a benchmark comparison, according to S&P Global. Voters' feelings about the stock market and economy could affect the 2024 election...
Tech companies, including a few names heavily associated with artificial intelligence work, led the S&P 500's gains. Seven of the largest tech stocks known as the "Magnificent Seven" — Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, Nvidia, Tesla and Meta — increased 75 percent on average in 2023 and represented 30 percent of the index's total market value at the end of 2023. "AI is the new dot-com," said Michael Farr of Farr, Miller and Washington. "It's the new magic that is going to change the world that we don't really understand yet. But we all understand it's very powerful." Those seven stocks made up around half of the S&P 500's growth last year. Nvidia, whose high-performance chips have become popular for AI uses, had the best year of the bunch, at one point gaining nearly $190 billion in value overnight, a 24 percent gain.
In the last 12 months, the index has risen 21.83%.
The article notes that "Although the rest of the market has lagged Big Tech, analysts say promising economic data from recent months has boosted optimism about the broader economy."
Pop! (Score:4, Insightful)
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Indeed. "Frenzy" and smart do not mix.
PopGPT (Score:1)
PopGPT
Another bubble. Great! (Score:4, Insightful)
People are incapable of learning, it seems. They make the same mistakes over and over and over again.
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People are incapable of learning, it seems. They make the same mistakes over and over and over again.
Can't accuse ChatGPT of that!
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Indeed. A thoroughly immoral system with the single purpose of separating the gullible form their money.
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Indeed. A thoroughly immoral system with the single purpose of separating the gullible form their money.
Always nice to hear from the whiners. If people wouldn't try to time the market, as the person above alluded to, this wouldn't be an issue. Invest some when the market is high so you are invested, invest more when it goes down so you own more stock. There's a reason Warren Buffett will tell you he never sells his stock. Sure, he buys when there is blood in the streets, but then he holds forever.
Having accumulated a few billion dollars over the years, he must be doing something right.
Re:Another bubble. Great! (Score:4, Informative)
It produces nothing.
Nope, it produces wealth for those don't treat it like a casino.
It destabilizes things.
Nope, it reacts to destabilization such as oil tankers being hit or businesses such as banks not doing their due diligence.
It makes people filthy rich that just got lucky.
Nope again. It allows anyone to accumulate wealth they otherwise wouldn't have. You think a janitor could accumulate millions [yahoo.com] of dollars just from their salary? And so what if they get filthy rich? Why should everyone remain poor?
Gambling on that level is a particularly bad idea and so is allowing it to happen.
Nope again again. It's not gambling. Gambling implies a series of random events such as what colored slot a ball will land in. Investing, which is the word you're looking for, is when you own part of a company (or companies) through their stock and benefit from the growth of that company through the increase in value of the company stock and any dividends the company pays out.
Incidentally: Asshole calls a rational person "whiner". How pathetic.
And your final Nope. You're a whiner because you don't want people to have money and grow. You want everyone to stay poor. You whine about other people's success and why they shouldn't have what they have.
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You are clearly deep in delusion. Maybe consume something besides propaganda occasionally?
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You do realize that the whole stock market is nothing but a parasite on the economy by now, do you? It produces nothing. It destabilizes things. It makes people filthy rich that just got lucky. Gambling on that level is a particularly bad idea and so is allowing it to happen.
Incidentally: Asshole calls a rational person "whiner". How pathetic.
That was my view as well. Then I bought some stocks and index funds. Completely changed my world view. I'm at peace now!
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I haven't seen a lot of people screaming "It's a new paradigm!" and "The old market rules no longer apply to this new technological innovation!", though.
THAT is when you know you're at the market top and things are about to come crashing down.
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Just before the GPT craze, there was a mini-pop over smart speaker AI when such products failed to produce enough revenues to offset R&D. The market is depending on a new fad replacing each dud fad. It can "work" as long as the next fad arrives in time, which is of course silly.
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Yo0ua re not wrong. Sounds like a thoroughly broken and perverted "market" to me, where products are not sold because they have value.
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> where products are not sold because they have value.
Usually there's one or two "break out" companies that end up monopolizing a new industry. If you put money on these hogs, they can make up for the 99 duds. Some of the duds end up getting bought up by the oligopolies, in which case you can still profit from them.
Such doesn't work well for smaller investors because they can't afford to buy enough shares in diff companies to be likely to hit a break-out.
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What I find amusing is that neither Google or Amazon seem to be trying to backport their updated AI technology to these smart speakers. If anything, they are "dumber" now than they were 4 years ago.
It's like they've given up on that market segment, and both companies are just waiting for the right time to kill it.
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People are incapable of learning, it seems. They make the same mistakes over and over and over again.
But what is the lesson? Certainly there are lessons about irrational exuberance in the stock market. However, the stock market is not the same as the hi-tech industry. In the dot.com bust, there were many companies that were based on bad ideas. However, there were also companies that survived and became stronger, and the ensuing years have shown that even some of the bad ideas had reasonable seeds that could be refined into practical companies.
Laying aside the stock market, there is perhaps some irratio
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People could also have played the lottery and won. Your point?
beanie babies (Score:3)
Re: I demand wall to wall stories on AI!!! (Score:2)
I suggest they create a sister site: "Slashbot".
Playing the bubble both ways (Score:2, Insightful)
I've got a ton of stock with a fair amount in tech. It's been nice in a fun way watching it climb but I don't take the numbers seriously. I'm just riding the wave.
I have a bunch of stable investments just to generate cash income so I can continue my life with no worries if the market crashes.
And I'm sitting on a lot of cash that's earning roughly 5.5%. This money isn't making as much as the stock but it goes straight to my pocket and when, not if, the bubble does pop, I'll be able to take advantage of th
A contrarian thought (Score:2)
Common wisdom calls for a year (or six months, or whatever) of emergency funds in cash or equivalent.
It really, though, depends upon your planning horizon, the probability of needed it, and the likelihood of events that trigger a need to draw. And, just as importantly, the chances of hitting the catastrophic zero.
What follows is for folks operating outside of a regime where running out is a concern, or possibly those who would have time to start again.
I'll assume (geometric) average long term return of 10
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I totally agree. I don't find your post contrary at all.
The -only- thing I disagree with is I think your 10% return is a -little- high and your inflation rate is a -little- low but I tend to do my future projection numbers very conservatively because "shit happens" and I don't want to start again.
The one thing I didn't see is living expenses taken out of the earnings or (gasp!) principal because I'm not working anymore so my investments have to carry me through but I do understand that post-income wasn't t
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10% is fine for a bottom line estimate. The S&P 500 has averaged over 11% per year over the last 70+ years. (!) A blind monkey could just keep investing in SPY or some other S&P 500 index fund and get 10%+.
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Hmmm, yes but.
The but is that it depends on when you got in the market because there were plenty of down years and some of those down years stretched out over a few years. So if you got in at a local peak then it crashed it could take several years to get back above where you got in which makes your average gain over time well under 10% for the first several years. This assumes the simple case of buy and hold with no selling of initial investment.
Otoh, if you got in during the crash with prices way down t
Caveat (Score:5, Informative)
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One year: 21.83%
Two years: 5%
Three years: 28%
So I'm not sure what your point is...
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Re: Caveat (Score:3)
Hence why we are nowhere near an ATH. Accounting for inflation the new ATH is 5200 or so
T.I.N.A (Score:2)
Got a pot of investment money you want to grow long term, and at least 100 in the IQ department? In the 1900s, you used to have a bunch of options: stocks, bonds, real estate, commodities, and several other smaller categories. You built a balanced portfolio, managed it smartly or outsourced the management, and boom it would grow nicely over time. Sure, stocks outperformed everything else, but the other categories didn’t suck and a balanced portfol
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Nowadays a balanced portfolio will perform MUCH worse, and still slam up and down, since most asset classes now rise and fall in sync, and everything else is so inferior to equities.
What goes up, must come down (Score:1)
AI is now responsible for *everything* (Score:2)
Seven of the largest tech stocks known as the "Magnificent Seven" — Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, Nvidia, Tesla and Meta — increased 75 percent on average in 2023 and represented 30 percent of the index's total market value at the end of 2023.
Of these "magnificent 7" only Microsoft and Nvidia are truly capitalizing on AI. The rest are trying desperately to jump on the bandwagon, but they are struggling to catch up. If this is truly an AI-driven boom, it's hard to see why all of these companies would be part of the gold rush. But then, maybe I give investors too much credit for (actual) intelligence.
Remember the Dot-com bubble...... AI warning (Score:2)
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I will be your fiduciary (Score:1)
Instead of paying fees on your 401K investments like the '2035 fund' that charges 1% of your overall principle (PRINCIPLE, not your profit), you can pay .001% fee for a S&P500 index fund and hit consistent 8% returns forever. You'll save hundreds of thousands of dollars folks.