A group of stocks known as the “Magnificent Seven”, which includes Google (NASDAQ:), Microsoft (NASDAQ:), Apple (NASDAQ:), NVIDIA (NASDAQ:), Amazon (NASDAQ:), Meta (NASDAQ:) and Tesla (NASDAQ:) together account for a market capitalization of $13.5 trillion, representing 27% of the total US market capitalization of $50.8 trillion.
There is also a significant amount of short interest in these stocks, totaling $127 billion, or 12% of the entire $1.08 trillion U.S. market short interest, S3 Partners said in a report Wednesday.
Notably, these seven stocks are the most shorted in the US market.
In 2024, despite the Nasdaq index rising more than 5%, short-term interest in the Magnificent Seven increased significantly.
The total rose 17%, from $109 billion to $127 billion, driven by $7.1 billion in new short sales and an $11 billion increase in the market value of previously sold shares.
NVIDIA, Microsoft and Tesla had the highest increases in short selling, while Apple and Amazon had the largest short covering year-to-date.
However, last week the trend reversed and there was a general move towards short covering as the stock prices of these companies began to rise.
“The market value of Mag 7 shorts increased by $8.9 billion over the last seven days, and we saw some squeeze-related short covering on NVDA, which was partially offset by increases in short selling on MSFT, AAPL and META.” S3 wrote.
“Today’s TSLA-driven price weakness generated $3.3 billion in one-day market price gains for Mag 7 short sellers and turned a loss-making April into $3.0 billion in gains, +2.4%. Mag 7 short positions continue to decline, down $9.0 billion, -7.7%, for the year,” the company added.
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TSLA and AAPL were the most profitable short positions among the Magnificent Seven in 2024, posting gains of $5.6 billion and $2.4 billion, respectively, according to the analytics firm. Conversely, NVDA, META and AMZN recorded the highest losses by market price, with NVDA leading with -$9.8 billion, followed by META with -$2.3 billion and AMZN with -$2.1 billion.