The Stocks Driving S&P 500 Returns in 2024

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June 28, 2024 Article/Editing: Graphics/Design:

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The Stocks Driving S&P 500 Returns in 2024

This was originally posted on our Voronoi app. Download the app for free on iOS or Android and discover incredible data-driven charts from a variety of trusted sources.

The S&P 500 is sitting at near-record highs, returning 15% year-to-date as of June 26, 2024.

Today, a limited number of stocks are powering the stock market’s rally as investors pour money into companies that are advancing AI technologies. As share prices skyrocket, many wonder if company valuations are overheated—or if they are supported by strong corporate fundamentals.

This graphic shows the top 10 S&P 500 stocks driving stock market returns in 2024, based on data from Goldman Sachs.

Big Tech Stocks Are Fueling Gains

Below, we show the companies making the largest contribution to the S&P 500’s rally:

RankCompanyTickerContribution to S&P 500 Return
YTD as of June 13, 2024 1NvidiaNVDA4.94% 2MicrosoftMSFT1.24% 3AlphabetGOOGL0.97% 4MetaMETA0.84% 5AppleAAPL0.81% 6AmazonAMZN0.72% 7BroadcomAVGO0.62% 8Eli Lilly & Co.LLY0.60% 9Berkshire HathawayBRK.B0.22% 10QUALCOMMQCOM0.21% Total S&P 500 Return YTD 202414.65%

As of June 13, 2024.

Chipmaker Nvidia has driven over a third of S&P 500 returns this year, with its share price soaring 162% year-to-date as of June 13, 2024.

In June, Nvidia became the world’s most valuable firm, commanding an estimated 70% to 95% of the AI chip market. In the latest quarter, revenue surged by threefold compared to a year earlier amid high chip demand. Overall, big tech companies such as Meta, Amazon, and Microsoft made up roughly 45% of its data-center revenue, with Meta running a staggering 350,000 H100 chips to power its AI systems this year alone.

Falling in second is Microsoft, which has invested billions in AI startups including OpenAI and Wayve, a self-driving car firm. Microsoft is a cloud service provider for ChatGPT, the large language model built by OpenAI. As AI demand exceeds capacity, and other business segments see solid growth, Microsoft’s revenue increased 17% year-over-year as of the second quarter of 2024.

Google’s parent, Alphabet, ranks next, followed by Meta and

The Most Popular Stocks in Hedge Fund Portfolios

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June 25, 2024 Article/Editing: Graphics/Design:

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The Most Popular Stocks in Hedge Fund Portfolios

This was originally posted on our Voronoi app. Download the app for free on iOS or Android and discover incredible data-driven charts from a variety of trusted sources.

In 2023, hedge funds managed over $4 trillion in assets, hitting a record high.

While the industry saw tepid returns over much of the last decade, it has seen a resurgence in interest amid a rising rate environment. Often, hedge funds cater to an investor base of pension funds, high-net worth investors, and university endowments.

The above graphic shows the most popular hedge fund investments, based on 13F filings via WhaleWisdom.

The Top Hedge Fund Investments

Overall, Microsoft stands as the most popular company, with 874 hedge funds holding the stock.

As the megacap ramps up its AI offerings, it is capturing significant interest from hedge funds. In 2024, Microsoft shares are up over 20% as of June 24, sitting near all-time highs. Like Microsoft, a substantial share of hedge funds hold big tech stocks such as Amazon, Alphabet, and Nvidia.

Here are the most commonly held stocks in hedge fund portfolios as of the first quarter of 2024:

RankCompanyShare of Hedge Funds
Holding the StockNumber of Hedge Funds
Holding the Stock 1Microsoft44%874 2Amazon42%835 3Alphabet Class A38%745 4Apple36%714 5Meta36%710 6Nvidia34%675 7Alphabet Class C32%631 8Visa31%617 9JPMorgan Chase & Co29%570 10Berkshire Hathaway
Class B28%564 11Mastercard26%521 12UnitedHealth Group26%518 13Johnson & Johnson26%517 14ExxonMobil Corp25%499 15Eli Lilly & Co.25%498 Advertisement

Ranking in fourth is Apple, with 36% of hedge funds investing in the company.

On a net basis, hedge funds added over 26 million shares of Apple to their portfolios over the quarter, the highest among the group. Hedge funds are increasingly warming up to the stock ahead of Apple introducing AI enhancements to its iPhones this year or in 2025.

By contrast, hedge funds made the greatest reductions in Nvidia and Alphabet on a net basis. Michael Burry’s Scion Asset Management LLC was among the hedge funds

All of the World’s Trillion-Dollar Companies in One Chart

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June 19, 2024 Graphics/Design:

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All of the World’s Trillion-Dollar Companies in One Chart

This was originally posted on our Voronoi app. Download the app for free on iOS or Android and discover incredible data-driven charts from a variety of trusted sources.

Chipmaker Nvidia is now the world’s most valuable company, which means its time for an update to our frequent “trillion-dollar club” post.

In this graphic, we’ve visualized the market capitalizations of the world’s trillion-dollar companies, as of June 18, 2024. Included for additional context is the market cap of the median S&P 500 firm (as of May 30, 2024), as well as Taiwan’s TSMC, which is the next closest company to reaching the $1 trillion milestone.

Data and Key Takeaways

The figures used to create this graphic are included in the table below. Numbers for each company come from Companiesmarketcap.com, while the median S&P 500 market cap was sourced from S&P Global.

CompanyMarket Cap (USD) 🇺🇸 Nvidia$3.34T 🇺🇸 Microsoft$3.32T 🇺🇸 Apple$3.29T 🇺🇸 Alphabet$2.17T 🇺🇸 Amazon$1.90T 🇸🇦 Saudi Aramco$1.79T 🇺🇸 Meta$1.27T 🇹🇼 TSMC$932B Median S&P 500 company$92B

Here are the key reasons behind each of these companies’ massive valuations:

Nvidia: Industry leader in data center chips, essential for training artificial intelligence Microsoft: Dominance in enterprise software products (e.g. Windows, Office, Azure) Apple: Strong track record of innovation and a large, loyal customer base Alphabet: Leading player in online advertising and other digital platforms (e.g. Google Search, Youtube) Amazon: Dominance in e-commerce and rising cloud computing market share through Amazon Web Services (AWS) Saudi Aramco: World’s largest oil producer with massive reserves Meta: Dominant player in social media (Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp)

If you’re interested in learning more, check out our graphic: Visualizing How Big Tech Companies Make Their Billions.

Which Company Will Hit $1 Trillion Next?

As of June 18, there are a few candidates that could soon join the trillion-dollar club, including TSMC ($932B), Berkshire Hathaway ($881B), Eli Lilly ($847B), and Broadcom ($839B).

Most of these stocks have climbed significantly in 2024 so far, with TSMC up 77% since the start of

Charted: Four Decades of U.S. Tech IPOs

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June 19, 2024 Graphics/Design:

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Charting Four Decades of U.S. Tech IPOs

This was originally posted on our Voronoi app. Download the app for free on iOS or Android and discover incredible data-driven charts from a variety of trusted sources.

Big technology companies have been enjoying a wave of stock market success, driving much of the growth in the S&P 500 index since the pandemic. Five of the companies currently dubbed the “Magnificent Seven” are behemoths in the tech space, with market capitalizations rivaling the size of entire countries’ GDPs.

We visualize the number of tech IPOs on American exchanges from 1980–2023. Data is sourced from “Initial Public Offerings: Updated Statistics” a database run by economist Jay R. Ritter, from the Warrington College of Business, University of Florida.

ℹ️ Tech stocks are defined as internet-related stocks plus other technology stocks, not including biotech New Tech Listings in 2021 Broke a 20-Year-Record

From the heydays of the Dotcom boom, when more than 350 companies hit the exchanges in 1999, the number of tech IPOs has dropped steeply over the years.

In fact, the Dotcom boom, driven by investor enthusiasm for internet technologies, and subsequent bust, due to a lack of capital and business viability, left a significant impact on the market. Tech IPOs stayed in the double-digits for the next 20 years.

YearU.S. Tech IPOs 198022 198172 198242 1983173 198450 198537 198677 198759 198828 198935 199032 199171 1992115 1993127 1994115 1995205 1996276 1997174 1998113 1999370 2000261 200124 200220 200318 200461 200545 200648 200776 20086 200914 201033 201136 201240 201345 201453 201538 201621 201730 201840 201938 202048 2021126 20226 20239

However, 2021 saw a significant uptick after

Charted: Stock Buybacks by the Magnificent Seven

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June 18, 2024 Graphics/Design:

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Charted: Stock Buybacks of the Magnificent Seven

This was originally posted on our Voronoi app. Download the app for free on iOS or Android and discover incredible data-driven charts from a variety of trusted sources.

By 2025, Goldman Sachs predicts that total U.S. stock buybacks will exceed $1 trillion. The bank sees this growth being driven by strong tech earnings growth and lower rates.

But what are buyback amounts like for the largest tech companies today?

This graphic looks at the total value of shares each Magnificent Seven company has repurchased in the last four quarters using data from their latest financial statements.

What is a Stock Buyback?

A stock buyback is when a company buys their own shares to reduce the number of available shares on the market. Companies may choose to buy back stock to return value to shareholders. Having fewer shares available improves earnings per share, and may drive up the stock price.

Buying back stocks can also come with risks, such as using up cash that would otherwise be put toward growing the business.

Stock Buybacks of Tech Titans

We gathered data from company financial statements to see how stock buyback amounts differed among the Magnificent Seven. Each total represents what companies reported from June 1, 2023 to June 1, 2024.

As we can see, the tech companies in the Magnificent Seven have been the ones buying back their stock over the past year.

CompanyTotal Stock BuybacksBuybacks as a % of Market Cap Apple$83B2.8% Alphabet (Google)$63B2.9% Meta$25B2.0% Microsoft$20B0.6% Nvidia$17B0.6% Amazon$0B0.0% Tesla$0B0.0%

Values rounded to the nearest billion. Company market caps are as of June 6, 2024.

Apple had by far the most share repurchases, raising its diluted earnings per share from $1.26 to $1.53. Going forward, Apple authorized an additional $110 billion for share repurchases, a U.S. record. The board says the repurchases are in light of their “confidence in Apple’s future and the value we see in our stock.”

On the flip side, both Amazon and Tesla did not issue stock buybacks in the last four quarters. Amazon’s CFO

Ranked: The 20 Biggest Tech Companies by Market Cap

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June 17, 2024 Graphics/Design:

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Ranked: The 20 Biggest Tech Companies by Market Cap

This was originally posted on our Voronoi app. Download the app for free on iOS or Android and discover incredible data-driven charts from a variety of trusted sources.

The world’s 20 biggest tech companies are worth over $20 trillion in total. To put this in perspective, this is nearly 18% of the stock market value globally.

This graphic shows which companies top the ranks, using data from Companiesmarketcap.com.

A Closer Look at The Top 20

Market capitalization (market cap) measures what a company is worth by taking the current share price and multiplying it by the number of shares outstanding. Here are the biggest tech companies according to their market cap on June 13, 2024.

RankCompanyCountry/RegionMarket Cap 1AppleU.S.$3.3T 2MicrosoftU.S.$3.3T 3NvidiaU.S.$3.2T 4AlphabetU.S.$2.2T 5AmazonU.S.$1.9T 6MetaU.S.$1.3T 7TSMCTaiwan$897B 8BroadcomU.S.$778B 9TeslaU.S.$582B 10TencentChina$453B 11ASMLNetherlands$415B 12OracleU.S.$384B 13SamsungSouth Korea$379B 14NetflixU.S.$281B 15AMDU.S.$258B 16QualcommU.S.$243B 17SAPGermany$225B 18SalesforceU.S.$222B 19PDD Holdings (owns Pinduoduo)China$212B 20AdobeU.S.$206B

Note: PDD Holdings says its headquarters remain in Shanghai, China, and Ireland is used for legal registration for its overseas business.

Apple is the largest tech company at the moment, having competed with Microsoft for the top of the leaderboard for many years. The company saw its market cap soar after announcing its generative AI, Apple Intelligence. Analysts believe people will upgrade their devices over the next few years, since the new features are only available on the iPhone 15 Pro or newer.

Microsoft is in second place in the rankings, partly thanks to enthusiasm for its AI software which is already generating revenue. Rising profits also contributed to the company’s value. For the quarter ended March 31, 2024, Microsoft increased its net income by 20% compared to the same quarter last year.

Nvidia follows closely behind with the third-highest market cap, rising more than eight times higher compared to its value at the start of 2023. The company has recently announced higher profits, introduced

What is the Median Pay of Magnificent Seven Companies?

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What is the Median Pay of Magnificent Seven Companies?

This was originally posted on our Voronoi app. Download the app for free on iOS or Android and discover incredible data-driven charts from a variety of trusted sources.

The Magnificent Seven are lifting the stock market to new highs, led by Nvidia, Microsoft, Apple, and Alphabet in particular.

In May alone, these tech giants added $1.4 trillion in market capitalization to the S&P 500—surpassing the combined gains of 296 other stocks during the same period. Notably, Nvidia contributed to more than half of this rise. As tech stocks boom, many are offering robust salaries with substantial stock option plans.

This graphic shows the median pay of the Magnificent Seven companies in 2023, based on analysis from The Wall Street Journal and MyLogIQ.

The Highest Paying Companies in the Magnificent Seven

Below, we show the median employee pay of the Magnificent Seven companies in 2023:

CompanyMedian Employee Pay
2023CEO Total Pay
2023 Meta$379,050$24.4M Alphabet$315,531$8.8M Nvidia$266,939$34.2M Microsoft$193,770$48.5M Apple$94,118$63.2M Tesla$45,811$0M Amazon$36,274$1.4M

Data for Microsoft is from SEC filings. Total CEO pay includes equity awards and cash pay.

Meta ranks as the highest overall, with a median pay of $379,050, which is more than six times the national median salary.

Not only is it the leading company in the Magnificent Seven, it has one of the highest median pay across S&P 500 companies. Between 2022 and 2023, employee pay increased 28%, following four rounds of layoffs that slashed thousands of employees in its “year of efficiency”.

Following Meta is Google’s parent company, Alphabet, with a median pay of $315,531. The company operates a hybrid work policy, requiring employees to be in the office about three days a week. This mirrors a trend seen across Amazon and Salesforce to encourage in-person collaboration.

At Nvidia, employees received a median pay of $266,939, fueled by its soaring share price. Last year, over $300 million in value was delivered to its staff under its employee stock purchase plan. Along with a competitive pay package, the company offers an unlimited vacation policy along with 22-weeks

Charted: How Many Data Centers do Major Big Tech Companies Have?

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June 4, 2024 Graphics/Design:

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How Many Data Centers do Major Big Tech Companies Have?

This was originally posted on our Voronoi app. Download the app for free on iOS or Android and discover incredible data-driven charts from a variety of trusted sources.

The Big Tech companies are often compared against each other in many ways: how much money they make, market capitalization, and the newest flavor, generative AI capabilities.

But in their great strides to capture the digital realm, how many huge data facilities do they need for all their services, analytics, and storage?

Sourcing information from Meta, Google, Microsoft, and some third-party estimates for Apple and Amazon, we find out.

Ranked: Big Tech’s Data Facilities

Cloud computing giants—Microsoft and Amazon—have data centers in the triple-digits to accommodate their customers’ burgeoning business demands.

However, there’s no one standard of how big a data center needs to be, so quantity doesn’t automatically translate into greater capacity.

Big Tech CompanyData Centers Microsoft**300 AWS*215 Google25 Meta24 Apple*10
Note: *Third-party estimates vary depending on the source. AWS is usually listed between 160–220 and Apple from 8–10. **Microsoft lists their count as “300+.”

According to Statista, AWS still maintains the biggest market share in the cloud computing segment (31%) even as Microsoft Azure edges ever closer (25%).

In fact, Amazon is aiming to spend $150 billion on more facilities over the next 15 years. Estimates say 26 data centers are currently under construction. All of this, of course, to chase the AI boom.

Despite dominating our digital lives however, Big Tech aren’t the only players when it comes to data center metrics. For example, Digital Realty, a colocation data center provider, would rank alongside Microsoft with 300+ data facilities.

Learn More about Big Tech and AI from Visual Capitalist

If you enjoyed this post, and you’re wondering which Big Tech players have made their forays into AI, check out Ranked: The Most Popular AI Tools. We visualize the most popular AI tools of 2023 along with recent tech adoption cycles and the software products that defined them.

Visualizing the Training Costs of AI Models Over Time

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June 4, 2024

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Visualizing the Training Costs of AI Models Over Time

This was originally posted on our Voronoi app. Download the app for free on iOS or Android and discover incredible data-driven charts from a variety of trusted sources.

Training advanced AI models like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini Ultra requires millions of dollars, with costs escalating rapidly.

As computational demands increase, the expenses for the computing power necessary to train them are soaring. In response, AI companies are rethinking how they train generative AI systems. In many cases, these include strategies to reduce computational costs given current growth trajectories.

This graphic shows the surge in training costs for advanced AI models, based on analysis from Stanford University’s 2024 Artificial Intelligence Index Report.

How Training Cost is Determined

The AI Index collaborated with research firm Epoch AI to estimate AI model training costs, which were based on cloud compute rental prices. Key factors that were analyzed include the model’s training duration, the hardware’s utilization rate, and the value of the training hardware.

While many have speculated that training AI models has become increasingly costly, there is a lack of comprehensive data supporting these claims. The AI Index is one of the rare sources for these estimates.

Ballooning Training Costs

Below, we show the training cost of major AI models, adjusted for inflation, since 2017:

YearModel NameModel Creators/ContributorsTraining Cost (USD)
Inflation-adjusted 2017TransformerGoogle$930 2018BERT-LargeGoogle$3,288 2019RoBERTa LargeMeta$160,018 2020GPT-3 175B (davinci)OpenAI$4,324,883 2021Megatron-Turing NLG 530BMicrosoft/NVIDIA$6,405,653 2022LaMDAGoogle$1,319,586 2022PaLM (540B)Google$12,389,056 2023GPT-4OpenAI$78,352,034 2023Llama 2 70BMeta$3,931,897 2023Gemini UltraGoogle$191,400,000

Last year, OpenAI’s GPT-4 cost an estimated $78.4 million to train, a steep rise from Google’s PaLM (540B) model, which cost $12.4 million just a year earlier.

For perspective, the training cost for Transformer, an early AI model developed in 2017, was $930. This model plays a foundational role in shaping the architecture of many large language models used today.

Google’s AI model, Gemini Ultra, costs even more, at a staggering $191 million. As of early 2024, the model outperforms GPT-4 on several metrics, most notably across the Massive Multitask Language Understanding (MMLU) benchmark. This benchmark serves

Visualizing the Companies Online Scammers Impersonate the Most

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May 30, 2024 Article/Editing:

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The Companies Online Scammers Impersonate the Most

This was originally posted on our Voronoi app. Download the app for free on iOS or Android and discover incredible data-driven charts from a variety of trusted sources.

Globally, online scams cost consumers and businesses billions annually through the use of increasingly sophisticated tactics that steal users’ data.

Often, this involves the use of “phishing”, which is when fraudsters send messages or emails impersonating a legitimate business requesting sensitive information. In fact, this type of attack is one of the most common types of cybercrimes, owing to its high efficacy.

This graphic shows the most commonly impersonated brands by online scammers, based on data from Proofpoint.

Tech Companies Stand as Prime Targets

As the table below shows, the most commonly targeted companies are tech companies, making up six of the top seven impersonated brands by fraudsters in 2023:

CompanyNumber of Messages Impersonating a Company Microsoft68.0M Adobe9.4M DHL8.8M Google6.1M AOL4.4M DocuSign3.5M Amazon3.1M

Ranking as the top company overall, 68 million messages impersonated Microsoft, outpacing second-highest company, Adobe by a wide margin.

Often, these fraudulent emails feature subject lines such as “Outlook Info Replacement” or “Message Failure Delivery Notice”, luring recipients to click on embedded links. These links then take users to a counterfeit website mimicking the Outlook login page, prompting them to input their login details. Ultimately, disclosing these details presents a security risk to individuals and organizations.

Going further, Office 365 was targeted the most across all Microsoft products, being mimicked by 20 million email threats.

This highlights how fraudsters target trusted brands where they can apply tactics of “credential harvesting”. In this way, scammers can target a Microsoft 365 account, for instance, which will give them access to an email account and other personal data.

Ranking in third was DHL, with 8.8 million impersonated messages. By targeting the courier company, fraudsters prey on recipients who may be anticipating details on package deliveries. In many cases, online scammers trick people into clicking on a link that mimics the official website, aiming to steal customers’ login information or