The "Magnificent Seven" — made up of Nvidia (NVDA), Alphabet (GOOG, GOOGL), Tesla (TSLA), Microsoft (MSFT), Amazon (AMZN), Meta (META), and Apple (AAPL) — have led the market (^DJI,^GSPC, ^IXIC) higher in 2024. While the narrow leadership has raised some concerns about concentration and broadening trading themes, Baird Investment strategist Ross Mayfield tells Brad Smith and Madison Mills on Morning Brief that these worries may be overblown. "It's certainly something we keep an eye on, but I would say that if you had been worried about that concentration or used it as a reason to get out of the market at any point over the last couple of years, it would have been a mistake," Mayfield says. The strategist believes investors "should be celebrating that some of the biggest and most innovative companies are in our markets. Concentration risk, or heavy concentration, has not been a good forward indicator over the last 40 or 50 years based on the data that we've seen." "It's something to keep an eye on [as] it maybe makes the market a little bit more fragile to something like Nvidia having a bad stretch run, but it's not something that we worry about too much," Mayfield adds. Watch the video above for more about Mayfield's Magnificent Seven outlook and what's next for the artificial intelligence (AI) trade. To watch more expert insights and analysis on the latest market action, check out more Morning Brief here. This post was written by Naomi Buchanan.
