Bulk of S&P 500 companies flat over past two months

Even as the S&P 500 hovers near all-time highs, investors have had to own the top 10 performers in the index to make money since the start of March.

Over the last two months, the vast majority of the benchmark US stock index — some 490 stocks — are essentially flat, according to Fundstrat.

Apple, Facebook, Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft, Visa, Philip Morris, Home Depot, Comcast and Oracle by contrast have done the heavy lifting, rising 18.4 per cent this year. Given the weighting of the companies in the index, they have been essential to producing gains over the last two months.

The group, which has a combined market cap of $3.4tn, includes most of the so-called FANGs (Facebook, Amazon, Netflix and Google) that led the market in 2015 and six of the top 10 names are tech companies.

“About 250 stocks are outperforming the index YTD, which on the surface, implies the market is broad…” says Fundstrat. “A lot of the heavy lifting is being done by a handful of stocks.”