The Visual Pull of Tech Stocks

Line charts show how the “Magnificent Seven” tech stocks—Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Tesla—affect the S&P 500. Students can analyze the potential audience and objective of each of these visual displays, find others, or create their own. Hover over for comments about each, and click on the slide for the original source. The data represents different timeframes, so the charts aren’t quite comparable.

This simple line chart compares returns of the total S&P 500 to that of the seven and the other 493 stocks. Note the typo in the first date on the X axis.

Dating back to October 2022, this line chart shows the downward pull of the seven in addition to the recent upswing. We can almost feel the effect both ways—the drag and the lift.

With this detail, we see the contribution of each stock. This would work better without the separate legend.

This tree map shows the market value of each stock, which explains why a rise in, for example, Microsoft, more significantly affects the S&P.

The donut is more graphical but conveys less than the tree map does.

This infographic/bubble chart has visual appeal (but weird color combinations) -- and does convey more information (including both market cap and return) than the others do.

This one is pretty but conveys little.

Students also might be interested in evaluating whether Tesla should remain part of the Magnificent Seven. Some believe it’s lackluster performance makes it unworthy of the designation.