The S&P 500 Keeps Hitting Highs — But It’s Just Microsoft and Nvidia Carrying the Entire Market

Rich Duprey

Sun, August 30, 2026 at 10:55 AM EDT 4 min read

Quick Read

• Microsoft and Nvidia added $1.42 trillion in market cap since July 13, while the other 71 tech stocks collectively lost $22 billion.

• Communication Services shed $300 billion and Industrials dropped $67 billion, revealing deep sector losses hidden beneath the S&P 500’s record highs.

• The S&P 500’s market-cap weighting means two stocks now determine its direction, leaving investors dangerously exposed if either AI giant disappoints.

• Act now: the analyst who called NVIDIA in 2010 just named his top 10 AI stocks — and Microsoft didn’t make the cut. Grab the names FREE today.

The stock market’s march to new highs has made the bull market look healthy. Earnings have rolled in, the S&P 500 has continued climbing, and investors can point to a rising index as evidence that corporate America is doing just fine.

The numbers beneath the surface, however, tell a different story.

Since second-quarter earnings season began on July 13, the S&P 500 has added $1.75 trillion in market value, according to Bespoke Investment Group, but nearly 80% of that gain came from the technology sector — and, more remarkably, virtually all of the sector’s advance came from just two companies.

Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) and Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) added a combined $1.42 trillion in market capitalization, while the other 71 stocks in the technology sector lost a combined $22.3 billion.

That’s not market breadth. That’s two companies carrying an awful lot of weight.

Two Stocks Are Doing The Heavy Lifting

Bespoke Investment Group’s data shows just how lopsided this earnings season has become. The technology sector added $1.392 trillion in market value, accounting for 79% of the S&P 500’s $1.75 trillion gain. Yet Microsoft and Nvidia alone contributed $1.42 trillion.

In other words, without those two stocks, the rest of the technology sector would have been underwater.

Here’s how the S&P 500’s sectors have changed since July 13:

Act now: the analyst who called NVIDIA in 2010 just named his top 10 AI stocks — and Microsoft didn’t make the cut. Grab the names FREE today.

Surprisingly, the index can continue hitting new highs even while several major sectors are losing hundreds of billions of dollars in value. That’s the mathematical quirk of a market-cap-weighted index: the biggest companies have the biggest influence.