Google, Apple, and Tesla - the cohort that has grounded the S&P 500's rally

The S&P 500 isn’t climbing like it should be, and three major companies are dragging it down hard. Apple, Google’s Alphabet, and Tesla are underperforming in 2025, and their weak numbers are putting a cap on the index’s growth.

This year, the S&P 500 has posted a gain of about 5%, but without these three pulling it backwards, it would be sitting two percentage points higher. That stat comes from data Bloomberg compiled, and it’s forcing investors to ask what the rally would look like without these lagging giants.

Apple Inc., the third-largest company on the S&P 500, has dropped 17% this year. The decline is tied to ongoing problems with US trade tariffs and the company’s failure to roll out functional AI services.

Apple hasn’t figured out how to integrate generative AI into its devices, even though it pushed the “AI for the rest of us” narrative more than a year ago. That campaign hasn’t translated into investor trust. Paul Marino, the chief revenue officer at Themes ETFs, said, “It makes sense that people aren’t pouring additional dollars into Apple right now until they have some kind of blueprint for what they’re going to be doing with AI.”

Investors move to other sectors as Big Tech splits

Alphabet Inc., which is worth around $2.1 trillion, is down 7% in 2025. The drop comes as more investors worry about the company’s search engine revenue. They fear AI chatbots could reduce the amount of traffic and ad dollars coming from Google Search. That threat has been hanging over Alphabet’s performance all year, and it’s pushing investors toward more aggressive AI names.

Tesla Inc. has had the worst slide of the three. Its stock is down 26%, and the reason is simple: demand for electric vehicles has fallen. Sales have slowed in multiple regions, and the company hasn’t announced anything that would change that trend. With fewer buyers for EVs and no new technology breakthroughs, Tesla hasn’t been able to stop the bleeding.

All three of these underperformers belong to the Magnificent Seven, a group of top tech stocks that helped lift the S&P 500 during the last few years. But this year, they’ve split into two groups. The gainers—Microsoft, Nvidia, and Meta Platforms—are all up more than 14%. They’ve taken full advantage of the AI boom.

Nvidia is benefiting from demand in infrastructure, while Meta is using AI tools to grow revenue faster.

Still, Apple might be looking for a way out. Shares rose over 3% this week after Bloomberg reported that the company is considering using Anthropic or OpenAI models to create a more advanced version of Siri. But so far, nothing has been confirmed, and the stock is still deep in the red for the year.

Tech dominance weakens while Congress returns to deadlock

Even though the S&P 500 is near a record high, most of the gains are coming from a few companies. Netflix, Broadcom, and Palantir have all made solid gains in 2025 and are helping support the index alongside Microsoft, Nvidia, and Meta. Meanwhile, Amazon is flat. Despite being part of the Mag 7, it hasn’t moved much this year, and it hasn’t helped the index either.

Together, the Mag 7 account for about one-third of the entire S&P 500, the same as seven of the benchmark’s eleven biggest sectors combined. That means when three of them fall, the market notices. On Tuesday, the information technology sector lost over 1%, and so did communications services.

The names that include Nvidia, Palantir, and AMD are taking the hit. Traders are now moving money into health care and materials stocks. Amgen, Johnson & Johnson, and UnitedHealth posted gains and helped the Dow Jones Industrial Average rise by 400 points on Monday. But that wasn’t enough. The S&P 500 still slipped 0.1% and the Nasdaq Composite dropped 0.8%.

Early Wednesday, the market moved only slightly. Dow futures rose 69 points, about 0.2%. S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 futures each rose just 0.1%.

Back in Washington, President Donald Trump’s tax-and-spending bill made it through the Senate on Tuesday… barely. The legislation now heads back to the House, where resistance among Republican lawmakers is still strong.

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