You know ‘em, you love ‘em, you regret not putting your life savings in them back in 2022: It’s the Magnificent 7.
But now that the year is coming to a close, exactly how magnificent was their performance?
Back in 2023, these seven stocks generated a staggering 76% return, far outpacing the S&P 500’s 24% gain that year.
2024 still saw these companies reaping huge rewards from AI hype, but the S&P 500’s rally was a little broader this time. While these seven tech titans beat the other 493 stocks in the S&P 500 by a staggering 62% in 2023, they outpaced the same stocks by just 22% in 2024, according to Goldman Sachs—still a resounding overperformance, though a clear slowdown.
Let’s take a look at how each company did:
- Nvidia: The chipmaker gained 182% this year, despite investors' constant fear that the AI darling had finally flown too close to the sun. If there’s one company that has illustrated the power of and promise of AI on stock returns, it's Kingvidia. Jensen Huang’s baby was able to beat investor doubts, antitrust probes from the US, Europe, and China, and a delay of its Blackwell AI chip, to finish the year as one of tech’s top performing stocks.
- Amazon: Your package has arrived, and it contains good news for Amazon investors: Shares are up 50% this year. Even as other retailers such as Target had trouble wooing consumers amid a broader economic slowdown, Amazon was still able to rake in record profits. Its summer Prime Day broke sales records, with $14.2 billion sold over the July sale period, and its stock hit an all-time high after a record-breaking Cyber Monday. But retail’s not the only thing it’s doing well: Just this month, Amazon Web Services announced it is planning to roll out its own AI chips.
- Apple: While its performance was not as impressive as fellow tech giants, Apple managed to still end the year up 34%. The firm rolled out Apple Intelligence in October, its own take on bringing generative AI to consumers, an update included integration with Open AI’s Chat GPT. But despite the unveiling of its newest iPhone 16 (yes, there have been that many), shares fell in October after TF International Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo said Apple cut its iPhone 16 orders by about 10 million for Q4 and the first half of next year.
- Alphabet: Overall, the company everyone still calls Google jumped 40% in 2024. But the firm faced a number of hurdles, including losing a major antitrust case back in August, which resulted in the DOJ recommending potentially breaking up the company and forcing a sale of its Chrome web browser. However, the election of President-elect Donald Trump has made analysts more optimistic that antitrust scrutiny will simmer down over the next four years. And yes, it’s all about AI, like everyone else: Just this month, its stock jumped after the company announced its own quantum computing chip. Copycat much?
- Microsoft: The company’s performance came in at the lower end of the Mag 7 range, but shares still rose over 16% year to date. The gains show just how competitive playing in the AI game really is. For example, even though Microsoft reported a stellar third quarter in October, with $65.6 billion in revenue and 34% year-over-year growth of its cloud computing service, investors still sent the stock down about 6% the next day due to tepid Q4 guidance. The lesson: You have to do more than just beat Street estimates to impress AI investors.
- Tesla: Elon Musk’s EV maker had a truly wild 2024, ending the year up 85%. Earlier this year, Tesla dropped into the red after major delays unveiling its highly anticipated Cybercab. But Musk was able to claw his way back to a success story, after the election of his close ally Donald Trump in November. Investors were also optimistic about the rollout of Tesla’s “Full Self Driving” (FSD) service and an acceleration in Tesla’s car sales over the last quarter. And then there’s the fact we’ve all been seeing more Cybertrucks on the road.
- Meta Platforms: Shares of Facebook’s parent company shot up 71% higher this year, and the hype wasn’t due to Mark Zuckerberg’s hype beast rebrand. The company has gone all-in on AI, splurging between $37 billion and $40 billion on capital expenditures this year, according to Zuckerberg, an amount that investors scrutinized but also hope pays off big. A boon to Meta stock has been the possible TikTok ban, which would likely drive users to Instagram.—LB