For more than three years, the ‘Magnificent Seven’ or ‘Mag 7’, which includes Nvidia, Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, Meta and Tesla, carried Wall Street. Then came June 2026. Nvidia dropped over 5%, Microsoft fell about 17%, its worst monthly performance since December 2000, Alphabet declined nearly 6%, Amazon lost roughly 12% and Meta dropped around 11%. As for Apple and Tesla, the companies had directionally different but equally volatile monthly moves. Apple made a new all-time high closing price of $315.2 on the second day of the month but subsequently declined more than 10% from that peak. On the other hand, Elon Musk’s company dropped more than 6% in the first week of June but clawed most of that back by the close of the month, ending roughly flat. Taken together, the ‘Magnificent Seven’ erased about $2.3 trillion (€2tn) in market value in a single month. Related What made the selloff remarkable was its breadth. Usually one or two stocks stumble while the others hold up. This time, nearly every member of the group moved lower. The Roundhill Magnificent Seven ETF (MAGS), which holds all seven companies, fell about 13% from its late May record high. So what happened to Wall Street’s favorite technology stocks? And why are investors backing away? Growing pains and spending The MAGS ETF bled more than $700 million (€615mn) over the month, its worst outflow since it launched in 2023, according to TradingView data. For a fund that had become the simplest way to bet on the US tech boom, the reversal was striking. One name outside the club had it even worse. Oracle, a hyperscaler not included in the ‘Magnificent Seven’, crashed around 35%, its steepest month since September 1990, after alarming investors with a surge in AI spending and debt. The fall wiped roughly $100 billion (€87.9bn) off the fortune of co-founder and billionaire Larry Ellison. The market punished the biggest AI spenders, and the numbers explain it. The five largest hyperscalers are set to spend more than $700 billion (€615bn) on AI infrastructure this year. Microsoft alone is heading towards roughly $190 billion (€167bn), according to estimates from the Bank of America. The bank said that hyperscaler capital spending has jumped from about 70% of operating cash flow in 2025 to nearly 100% in 2026. Related Story Continues The translation is simple: far less capital left over for share buybacks and dividends, and an increasingly larger bill that will need to be justified with future revenue as costs are climbing too. The ‘Magnificent Seven’ are the biggest buyers of the memory that feeds AI data centres, and those chips have become scarce and expensive. Micron Technology, one of the main memory chipmakers, reported earnings per share of $24.67 for its latest quarter, up from $1.68 a year earlier, close to a fifteenfold jump. Prices for DRAM, the memory inside almost every device, rose as much as 98% in the first quarter alone, a surge some in the industry have nicknamed “RAMageddon”. A quieter shift beneath the surface While the biggest technology stocks struggled, the rest of the market continued to rise. LPL Financial chief equity strategist Jeff Buchbinder points to that trend. Excluding the ‘Magnificent Seven’, the remaining S&P 500 companies grew earnings by 17.5% in the first quarter, helped in part by semiconductor and memory producers. Buchbinder expects that figure to exceed 20.5% in the second quarter. Meanwhile, the earnings growth projection for the ‘Magnificent Seven’ will be lower than that. FILE. The Douglas County Google Data Centre complex in Lithia Springs, Georgia, 6 March 2026 – AP Photo/Mike Stewart In other words, the other 493 companies are now growing earnings faster than the market’s biggest stars, and investors have noticed. By late June, the S&P 493 – which excludes the ‘Magnificent Seven’ – had climbed 13.7% for the year. In contrast, the ‘Magnificent Seven’ basket was down 6.6%, while the broader S&P 500 posted a more modest 7.4% gain. According to veteran investor Ed Yardeni, investors are beginning to show signs of AI fatigue, questioning whether unprecedented spending on infrastructure will ultimately generate attractive returns as cheaper open source models proliferate and AI token prices continue to decline. Are the ‘Magnificent Seven’ still “magnificent”? The ‘Magnificent Seven’ still delivered an estimated 29% earnings growth in the first quarter, and they are unlikely to lose their leadership positions anytime soon. Yet, the debate has shifted. Investors are no longer asking whether AI will transform the economy. They are asking when hundreds of billions of dollars in AI investment will begin producing meaningful returns. June may have offered the first clear answer. The AI trade is no longer a one way bet on seven companies. The ‘Magnificent Seven’ created the AI boom, but they are no longer the only way to invest in it. View Comments
