AI has continued to warm up infrastructure needs and is further concentrating the rise in the United States stock market on a few segments. The latest data show that the market value of the semiconductor unit in the General 500 index has risen to 18.8 per cent, a record high and significantly above the 2022 level.
The SOX index rose by 546 per cent in three years.
This round of expansion coincided with a significant increase in the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index (SOX). The data show that the SOX index has increased cumulatively by 546 per cent since 2022, with the main driving force behind it being the continued market input to infrastructure such as AI chips, servers and data centres.
The semiconductor plate now weighs more than three times what it was in 2022. The increased concentration of plates also means that index performance is increasingly dependent on a few large technology and chip companies.
Weights above Internet bubbles
This change has been brought to the fore because the share of semiconductor companies in the standard 500 is now higher than during the Internet bubble. At the same time, the “United States Seven” together currently accounts for about 33 per cent of the total market value of the standard 500.
This suggests that the index rise is being led more by a few leading firms than by the synchronization of a wider industry. This structure also magnifies the exposure of the head science and technology unit for passive tracking of funds from standard 500.
The increase in the year was mainly from AI and energy.
Apollo also shows that since January this year almost all of the increase in the scale 500 has come from AI and energy-related stocks. In other words, the current U.S. stock movement is increasingly concentrated on a few distinctly beneficial tracks.
In terms of market structure, the high innovation of semiconductor weights reflects not only the continued heat of AI investments, but also the growing reliance on a few industries.