Amazon, Apple, Microsoft firm up industry-group dominance

The three biggest U.S. companies by market value are gaining even more dominance within their industry groups in a bear market. Amazon.com Inc. accounted for as much as 45.5% of the total value for companies in the S&P 500 Consumer Discretionary Index last week, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The third-most-valuable company’s share was 9.9 percentage points higher than on Feb. 19, when an almost 11-year bull market in U.S. stocks ended. No. 1 Microsoft Corp. and No. 2 Apple Inc. peaked at a combined 41.8% of the S&P Technology Index’s value on March 18, up two points from Feb. 19.

 

U.S. consumer stocks echo dot-com era performance

U.S. consumer stocks are behaving as they did during the Internet bubble of the 1990s. The S&P 500 Consumer Discretionary Index, including automakers, media companies and retailers, closed Wednesday at its highest level relative to the food, beverage and tobacco companies in the S&P 500 Consumer Staples Index since March 2000, when the dot-com era peaked. The indexes’ ratio was less than 3 percent from a record, set the same month. “That trend is not yet showing signs of coming to an end,” Andrew Adams, a strategist at Raymond James Financial Inc., wrote Wednesday in a report with a similar chart.