Just 20 Stocks Have Driven S&P 500 Returns So Far in 2023
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Just 20 Stocks Have Driven S&P 500 Returns So Far in 2023

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Top 20 Stocks Drive Most of S&P 500 Returns

Just 20 Stocks Have Driven Most of S&P 500 Returns

Just 20 firms—mainly AI-related stocks—are propping up the S&P 500 and driving it into positive territory, signaling growing risk in the market.

The above graphic from Truman Du shows which stocks are making up the vast majority of S&P 500 returns amid AI market euphoria and broader market headwinds.

Big Tech Stock Rally

Tech and AI stocks have soared as ChatGPT became a household name in 2023.

The below table shows data from last month, highlighting that just a small collection of companies drove most of the action on the U.S. benchmark index.

Company RankNameContribution to S&P 500 ReturnAverage Weight
1Apple1.49%6.61%
2Microsoft1.15%5.72%
3NVIDIA 1.00%1.62%
4Meta0.66%1.15%
5Amazon0.51%2.56%
6Tesla0.50%1.39%
7Alphabet (Class A Shares)0.34%1.72%
8Alphabet (Class C Shares)0.31%1.53%
9Salesforce0.19%0.51%
10Advanced Micro Devices0.16%0.39%
11General Electric0.10%0.28%
12Visa0.10%1.08%
13Broadcom0.09%0.73%
14Intel0.09%0.35%
15Walt Disney0.08%0.55%
16Booking Holdings0.07%0.28%
17Exxon Mobil0.06%1.37%
18Netflix0.06%0.44%
19Oracle0.06%0.40%
20Adobe0.06%0.49%
Top 20 Companies7.05%29.17%
S&P 500*7.55%100.00%

*Based on the Vanguard S&P 500 ETF as of April 11, 2023. Source: Vanguard S&P500 ETF, Bloomberg.

Microsoft invested $10 billion into OpenAI, the creators of ChatGPT. It has also integrated generative AI into its search engine Bing. This large language model is designed specifically to make search capabilities faster, generate text, and perform other automations.

Also of interest is NVIDIA, which is the most valuable chipmaker in America. It sells $10,000 chips called A100s that allow machine learning models to run. These models perform multiple tasks simultaneously to develop neural networks and train AI systems, including OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Companies that are developing AI-related services, such as chatbots or image generation, may use up to thousands of these chips.

Despite being the world’s most valuable company and a key driver of returns, Apple is an outlier among tech giants with no major projects announced in AI (so far).

Implications of Market Divergence

The problem with the strong gains seen in a few select AI-related stocks is that it clouds wider stock market performance.

Without the AI-led rally, the S&P 500 would be returning -1.4%. as of May 17, 2023.

This form of steep divergence, known as market breadth, often signals higher risk in the market.

When more companies experience positive returns it is less risky than a small handful seeing the majority of the gains. Today market breadth is very narrow, and these companies make up over 29% of the entire index’s market capitalization.

How long AI-related firms mask the broader performance of the S&P 500 remains to be seen. A growing number of market pressures, from higher interest rates to banking uncertainty could add further challenges.

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This article was published as a part of Visual Capitalist's Creator Program, which features data-driven visuals from some of our favorite Creators around the world.

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Ranked: The Smartest AI Models, by IQ

Some of the smartest AI models are already surpassing human intelligence, with one model falling in the “genius” category of IQ.

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This infographic compares 24 leading AI models by their performance on the Mensa Norway IQ test, highlighting the world's smartest AI models.

Ranked: The Smartest AI Models, by IQ

This was originally posted on our Voronoi app. Download the app for free on iOS or Android and discover incredible data-driven charts from a variety of trusted sources.

Mirror mirror on the wall, who’s the smartest AI of them all?

Artificial intelligence is designed to be intelligent. But how do today’s leading AI models stack up in human IQ terms, and which ones are the smartest?

This infographic ranks the smartest AI models based on their performance on the Mensa Norway IQ test, with data compiled by Tracking AI. The Mensa test is a widely recognized and highly difficult IQ exam used to evaluate human intelligence.

For context, the average human IQ score ranges from 90 to 110, while a score above 130 is typically considered genius-level.

AI with Genius-Level IQ

Topping the chart is OpenAI’s text-only o3 model, scoring a 135 on the Mensa IQ test, which puts it in the “genius” category. As a part of ChatGPT, it’s also among the world’s most popular AI tools.

Model NameMensa Norway IQ Test Score
OpenAI o3135
Claude-4 Sonnet127
Gemini 2.0 Flash Thinking Exp.126
Gemini 2.5 Pro Exp.124
OpenAI o4 mini122
Claude-4 Opus120
Grok-3 Think112
DeepSeek R1106
Llama 4 Maverick105
OpenAI o1 Pro102
DeepSeek V3100
GPT4.5 Preview99
Grok-397
Gemini 2.5 Pro Exp. (Vision)96
GPT-4o93
OpenAI o4 mini high92
Claude-3.7 (Vision)91
Bing Copilot86
Mistral85
OpenAI o1 Pro (Vision)83
OpenAI o3 (Vision)72
Llama-3.2 (Vision)70
GPT-4o (Vision)63
Grok-3 Think (Vision)60

Anthropic’s Claude-4 Sonnet and Google’s Gemini 2.0 Flash Thinking follow closely with IQ scores of 127 and 126, respectively. Furthermore, new iterations like the Gemini 2.5 Pro and OpenAI o4 mini both scored over 120, above the average human IQ range.

Overall, these high scores prove that leading AI models are now operating at high levels of intelligence, with some even surpassing the smartest human minds.

However, what’s more surprising is that all of the top 10 smartest AI models are text-only models that cannot read or process images.

The IQ Contrast Between Text and Vision AI Models

Based on IQ scores, it seems like reasoning through words is still a much stronger suit for AI than interpreting and solving visual images and puzzles.

The bottom five AI models by IQ scores are all multimodal models with the ability to read and process images. In particular, OpenAI’s GPT-4o (Vision) and xAI’s Grok-3 Think (Vision) landed far below the human average, scoring 63 and 60 on the test, respectively.

Still, the results are telling: AI isn’t just mirroring human intelligence, it’s even outscoring us in certain areas of cognition and reasoning.

Learn More on the Voronoi App

See what humans are using AI for in 2025, in this infographic on the Voronoi app.

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