The “Magnificent 7” – Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, Nvidia, Meta, and Tesla – have been the darlings of Wall Street for the past few years. Their dominance in technology and their massive market capitalization have made them key drivers of the S&P 500’s performance. In 2024 they gained 63%, after rising more than 75% the year before. But will their reign continue in 2025?
Despite a rocky year in 2023, entertainment stocks are expected to rebound in 2024, as the tides are turning. Streaming and gaming services should recover, boosted by increased advertisement support and streaming bundles, analysts believe. Emerging markets, such as Indonesia, will also bring growth.
Apple Inc. (AAPL) has been making headlines lately due to the rumours surrounding its upcoming Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) scheduled for June 5, 2023. The rumours suggest that the tech giant is poised to unveil a highly anticipated virtual reality (VR) headset, potentially marking the company’s most significant product launch since the iPad in 2010. As the date approaches, there has been a noticeable buzz in the financial markets regarding Apple stock’s potential reaction to this announcement.
The U.S. market has experienced a significant shift in recent years, with a handful of tech giants commanding a larger share of the S&P 500 index. This has led traders to seek ways to hedge their short index positions and protect their portfolios. In this article, we will delve deeper into the growing dominance of Apple Inc. and Microsoft Corp. in the S&P 500 and explore how these secular stocks can help balance the risks associated with short positioning in index trading.
Source: Dreamstime | Author: Ilkin Guliyev
Reading time: 8 minutes
A bear market, or the period when stocks lose their value for a prolonged period of time, can no doubt sound scary to first-time investors. And while every market goes through this cycle at some point in its lifespan, the good news is that the bulls far outlive the bears when it comes to longevity.
So, what are bull and bear markets, what causes a bear market, and what can you do to protect your portfolio when all of your assets seem to be headed towards record lows?
Source: Dreamstime | Author: DeltaStock
Reading time: 6 minutes
First came the global pandemic. Now, a full-scale war not seen in nearly a century threatens to repeatedly shake the global economy to its core, and yesterday’s bullish markets have ventured deep into the red. Doom and gloom forecasts aside, there are still plenty of strategies that traders could employ to take advantage of today’s unstable price movements.
One such strategy is called short selling.