Comparing Your Portfolio to the S&P 500 Can Be a Losing Game
As I wrote this blog, the S&P 500 index is up roughly 17% year-to-date. Most likely, your portfolio isn’t. This is a common frustration among many investors in the market this year in particular. As discussed previously, the S&P 500 index performance is a bit deceiving. The majority of the gain in the market this year has come from essentially seven stocks with the largest concentration in the index in terms of market capitalization.
The surge in those stocks has skewed the performance of the broad market index. The performance of the bottom 493 stocks remains markedly different.
As shown, the market capitalization of the top seven stocks is so large that it skews the performance of the index overall. We can see this visually by comparing the performance of the market and equal-weighted S&P 500 indices.
This market bifurcation may not change in 2024 if Goldman Sachs is correct in their estimates.
“Consensus expects the Magnificent 7 will continue to deliver faster growth than the rest of the index. Analyst estimates show the mega-cap tech companies growing sales at a CAGR of 11% through 2025 compared with just 3% for the rest of the S&P 500. The net margins of the Magnificent 7 are twice the margins of the rest of the index, and consensus expects this gap will persist through 2025.
From a valuation perspective, the Magnificent 7 trade at a large P/E premium vs. the rest of the market, but relative valuations stand in line with recent averages after accounting for expected growth. The Magnificent 7 trades at a P/E of 29x, 1.7x the 17x P/E multiple of the median S&P 500 stock. This ratio ranks in the 91st percentile since 2012. However, on an earnings-weighted basis, the Magnificent 7 long-term expected EPS growth is 8 pp
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