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13 November 2025
Two Years of the Rise of the "Magnificent Seven" Tech Stocks
A picture of a large electronic screen showing the tickers NVDA, AAPL, MSFT, GOOG, AMZN, META, and TSLA, and the words 'MAGNIFICENT 7'. Image generated by Microsoft Copilot Designer

The seven companies that make up the S&P 500's "Magnificent Seven" stocks have been on the rise for some time.

Two years ago, they combined to account for 30% of the total valuation of the S&P 500 (Index: SPX). And to be sure, several of the members of this elite group of high-flying companies were already among the biggest components of the index before they became collectively known as the "Magnificent 7". The weren't known by that label until 2023, when Bank of American analyst Michael Hartnett first deployed the phrase with respect to "a basket of seven stocks: Alphabet (GOOG, GOOGL), Amazon (AMZN), Apple (AAPL), Meta Platforms (META), Microsoft (MSFT), Nvidia (NVDA) and Tesla (TSLA)".

Since then, these mega-cap stocks have earned the moniker by growing even larger. Through October 2025, they have collectively grown to account for 37% of the entire market capitalization of the S&P 500.

Pretty amazing stuff when you realize that Tesla wasn't even a publicly-traded company until 2010 and Nvidia's explosive growth because of its Artificial Intelligence (AI) enabling computer chip technology began in 2023.

The following pair of charts illustrate the growth of the Magnificent Seven stocks over the past two years. The first chart shows how their value has increased and driven the growth of the S&P 500 index itself. The second chart shows how their collective share of the S&P 500 index has likewise grown.

Market Capitalization of tthe S&P 500 Index and Its Magnificent Seven Stock Components, Novemmber 2023 to October 2025
Market Capitalization of the S&P 500 Index and the Magnificent Seven Stocks as a Percent of the Index' Total Valuation, November 2023 to October 2025

They're able to drive the total valuation of the S&P 500 because their market capitalizations make up such a large share of the index. In today's market, what happens to the S&P 500 index is almost all about what's happening with the Magnificent Seven stocks.

How long might that last? Time will tell, but it helps put today's record concentration of market capitalization by seven companies into some context, the last time the S&P 500 index (or rather, its predecessor index, the S&P 90) had such a large percentage of its total value represented by such a small number of stocks was back in 1932.

References

Follow the links for the tickers of the Magnificent Seven stocks we posted in the article to our sources for their market capitalization. Meanwhile, here's our source for the S&P 500's monthly market capitalization:

Standard and Poor. S&P Market Attributes Web File. [Excel Spreadsheet]. Accessed 3 November 2025.

Image Credit: Microsoft Copilot Designer. Prompt: "A picture of a large electronic screen showing the tickers NVDA, AAPL, MSFT, GOOG, AMZN, META, and TSLA, and the words 'MAGNIFICENT 7'".

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- posted by Ironman at 5:11 AM | Permalink | Home |
12 November 2025
A Sampling of Dividend Decreases in 2025
A realistic image of a dividend cheque from 'DIVIDEND PAYING COMPANY' being cut in half by a pair of scissors symbolizing dividend cuts or financial loss with a neutral background. Image generated by Microsoft Copilot Designer

According to Standard & Poor, through October, there have been 145 dividend decreases announced by publicly traded U.S. firms during 2025.

But which companies have reduced their dividend payouts to their shareholding owners? Which industries have been most affected by the kinds of adverse business conditions that led the boards of directors at these companies to cut their dividends?

We've sampled 77 dividend decrease announcements made in the period from January 2025 through October 2025 to find out. Here's that list, in which clicking the company's name will take you to our source for the dividend decrease announcement and provide more information about it. We're also presenting a bonus section that includes firms that declared they will pay lower dividends than they did in their previous dividend payout during the first seven days of November 2025....

January 2025

February 2025

March 2025

April 2025

May 2025

June 2025

July 2025

August 2025

September 2025

October 2025

November 2025 (through 7 November 2025)

Some quick notes. First, there are a number of monthly dividend payers included in this sampling that pay variable dividends. These are primarily oil and gas royalty trusts, which pay distributions that are directly tied to their previous month's revenues and earnings and which fluctuate with the price of oil. When you see a lot of these firms in a month, it usually means the oil and gas industry experienced some distress in the form of lower oil prices in the previous month. Several of these firms made multiple appearances in our sampling during 2025.

Other firms pay fixed dividends, where the firms' board of directors deliberately acted to change their dividend policy. That's a painful act for all involved: shareholders, managers, and the board members at these companies because their dividend decrease is often accompanied by a plunge in their stock price. That's so painful they typically seek to avoid cutting their dividends unless they see no way around it because the outlook for the companies has changed for the worse.

2025 provided a great example of that kind of pain and reaction from an unexpected dividend cut in the story of Organon, which "blindsided" investors by slashing their dividend by 92% on 1 May 2025. Since then the company's stock price has continued to flounder in no small part because its now-former CEO was engaged in an "improper" practice that artificially inflated the pharmaceutical firm's earnings.

Other companies provided information that gave ample warning to investors long before they finally cut their dividend. One example is chemical industry giant Dow, which halved its dividend on 24 July 2025. The firm's divided cut came after several quarters of a worsening business outlook in which investors expecting the firm would be forced to cut its dividend steadily sent its stock price lower.

Speaking of which, another chemical industry firm, LyondellBasell Industries (NYSE: LYB) has seen its stock price follow a similar downward trajectory that is still continuing as its business outlook worsened and as the sustainability of its dividend, which has not yet been cut, has increasingly come into question. This is a company to pay attention to pay attention to for that reason in the months ahead.

We'll close with a chart showing which industries have experienced the most dividend decreases during the first ten months of 2025:

Sampled Dividend Decreases in U.S. by Industrial Sector, 1 January 2025 through 31 October 2025

2025 has been a year in which oil and gas prices have fallen, which accounts for the oil and gas industry's leading position in the chart. Real estate investment trusts (REITs) claimed second place, though much of this industry's distress carried over from 2024 as the Biden-Harris era's elevated mortgage and interest rates continued into 2025.

Image Credit: Microsoft Copilot Designer. Prompt: "A realistic image of a dividend cheque from 'DIVIDEND PAYING COMPANY' being cut in half by a pair of scissors, symbolizing dividend cuts or financial loss, with a neutral background".

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- posted by Ironman at 5:03 AM | Permalink | Home |
11 November 2025
U.S. Nonfarm Employment Drops in October 2025
Woman Filling Out a Job Application by amtec_photos on Wikimedia Commons - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Woman_Filling_Out_a_Job_Application_-_38856854561.jpg

Revelio Lab's non-government dependent jobs data for October 2025 reports the seasonally-adjusted total nonfarm employment level in the U.S. is 159,238,994. This figure represents a 9,057 net loss in jobs from September 2025.

The firm's detailed employment by sector data indicates the biggest contributor to the net loss in jobs was reduction in the number of government employees compared to the previous month. Overall, for the sixteen sectors tracked by Revelio Labs, nine were negative and seven were positive, with most showing relatively small changes in October 2025. Here are the five sectors that saw the biggest month-over-month changes:

  • Government: 23,279,400 (-22,200)
  • Retail Trade: 15,410,900 (-8,500)
  • Manufacturing: 12,784,400 (-5,200)
  • Financial Activities: 9,397,800 (+9,600)
  • Education and Health Services: 26,929,800 (+22,000)

We've updated our pair of charts tracking Revelio Lab's seasonally-adjusted nonfarm employment data from January 2022 through October 2025, which we've compared against available data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, which hasn't reported any jobs data past August 2025 because of the continuing federal government shutdown.

U.S. Total Nonfarm Employment (Seasonally Adjusted), January 2022 - October 2025

The chart also reveals how Revelio Lab's data was revised over this period with its latest report. We observe the firm's estimates increased by a small amount over the entire period covered by our chart.

We've also indicated the BLS' total nonfarm employment estimates for the period, which are quite different in the period from January 2022 up to January 2025. The BLS' employment estimates have deteriorated in quality in recent years because the size of its sampling of U.S. employers plunged during the 2020's coronavirus pandemic and has not recovered, giving the BLS a much less complete picture of the nation's employment situation than it had before.

With enough Democratic party senators voting to break their party's filibuster against a Republican bill that would fund the U.S. government's operations, an end to the shutdown now appears to be on track. However, we think it will likely be another month before the BLS' employment estimates for the months they missed reporting might become available. After they do become available, we'll do one last recap of the total nonfarm employment data before resuming our series on teen employment trends.

References

Revelio Labs. Total Nonfarm Employment National. [CSV Data]. 2 November 2025.

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Total Nonfarm Employment. Current Employment Statistics - CES. [Online database]. Last Updated 5 September 2025.

Image credit: Woman Filling Out a Job Application by amtec_photos on Wikimedia Commons Creative Commons CC by-SA 2.0 Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic Deed.

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- posted by Ironman at 5:11 AM | Permalink | Home |
10 November 2025
S&P 500 Falls as AI Tech Stocks Get Reality Checked
An editorial cartoon of a Wall Street bear who is anxious because they see a ticker that says 'AI STOCKS FALLING'. Image generated with Microsoft Copilot Designer.

The S&P 500 (Index: SPX) fell 1.6% from its previous week's close as investors developed higher anxiety over the future of firms betting big on Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems. The index ended the first trading week of November 2025 at 6,728.80.

The state of AI-tech stocks provided the biggest market-moving story of the week that was. High-flying AI stocks got their first major reality check since April 2025. Many stocks were pulled lower as investors weighing recent earnings reports found the firms' capital spending to be higher than expected, lowering both their free cash flow and future earnings expectations.

For the S&P 500, that pulled the entire index lower because of the outsize share of just a handful of tech firms among the component stocks that make up the index.

The shift of investor focus toward future earnings can be seen in the latest update to the alternative futures chart. The trajectory of the S&P 500 moved in a new Lévy flight event, as investors shifted their attention from the near term future of 2025-Q4 toward the more distant investment horizon of 2026-Q2.

Alternative Futures - S&P 500 - 2025Q4 - Standard Model (m=-2.0 from 28 Apr 2025) - Snapshot on 7 Nov 2025

That shift occurred despite the continuation of mixed messages from Federal Reserve officials, which had dominated investor attention in the preceding two weeks. The week's market moving headlines capture that noise and also the investor anxiety arising over the big AI-technology related bets being placed by the market's biggest companies.

Monday, 3 November 2025
Tuesday, 4 November 2025
Wednesday, 5 November 2025
Thursday, 6 November 2025
Friday, 7 November 2025

The CME Group's FedWatch Tool indicates a 72% probability of one more quarter point cut to the Federal Funds Rate in 2025, coming on 10 December (2025-Q4). In 2026, the FedWatch tool anticipates better than 50% probabilities for quarter point rate cuts on 18 March (2026-Q1) and 29 July (2026-Q3), which is earlier than last week. The potential timing of these rate cuts remains very fluid at this time.

The Atlanta Fed's GDPNow tool projection of real GDP growth in the U.S. during the recently ended 2025-Q3 ticked up to +4.0% from +3.9%, even though many economic data reports remain on hold because of the Senate Democrats' ongoing refusal to fund government operations. The BEA's official estimates of GDP in 2025-Q3 remain on hold as well.

Image credit: Microsoft Copilot Designer. Prompt: "An editorial cartoon of a Wall Street bear who is anxious because they see a ticker that says 'AI STOCKS FALLING'"

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- posted by Ironman at 5:01 AM | Permalink | Home |
07 November 2025
How Fit Are You Really?
Person in white and black nike shoes photo by Sincerely Media on Unsplash - https://unsplash.com/photos/person-in-white-and-black-nike-shoes-R_Vkw9YC_U8

Imagine you're an athlete playing your favorite sport. Your moment in the big game has come and the outcome now entirely hinges on your ability to reach deep and put out your peak performance. What does that mean for you?

If you are an athlete in excellent shape after years of conditioning with the daily support of the world's best trainers, you probably have a good idea of what your maximum effort can produce. But what if you're not and you find yourself in a situation where your athletic ability will be put to the test? Such a moment might come in the form of a friendly pickup game or just playing with your kids. Or it could come because you need to make a mad dash to catch your connecting flight at the airport before the gate closes. In all these situations, your fitness matters, so how fit are you really?

Most people don't have access to the top trainers and the equipment they use to bring professional athletes to the highest level of their performance. You may be surprised to learn you don't necessarily need that access to get a relatively good idea of how fit you really are.

What you need is an estimate of your VO₂ max, which according to Harvard Health, is "an objective measurement to tell just how fit you are". Here's how they describe the metric:

The V in VO₂ max stands for volume, while O₂ max stands for oxygen. As such, VO₂ max measures how much oxygen your body consumes while exercising. Typically, VO₂ max is measured as ml/kg/minute (milliliters of oxygen consumed per kilogram of body weight per minute of exercise).

When you breathe, your lungs absorb oxygen and transport it your red blood cells, which carry the oxygen to all of your body's organs and muscles. Your muscle cells need oxygen to generate adenosine triphosphate (ATP). ATP provides the main energy source your muscles need to do their work. The more oxygen you can breathe in, the more ATP your muscles produce, creating the energy to fuel your muscles and power your workout. (This is also why you breathe faster while exercising.)

If you have a higher VO₂ max, that means your heart and lungs are more effectively supplying blood to your muscles, and that your muscles are efficiently extracting and using oxygen from your blood. That's why a high VO₂ max is a good indicator of a high fitness level.

How high is your VO₂ max?

If you know a professional trainer who has access to an exercise medicine lab, they can hook you up to an apparatus that measures how much air you breathe while you engage in intense physical activity to get the best possible estimate of your VO₂ max. If you're like most of us, you don't have that access, but that's not a limitation.

That's because you can get a reasonable estimate of your VO₂ max by taking a very brisk walk on a relatively flat, mile-long path, a stopwatch, and a calculator. It wouldn't hurt to have a smart watch or other device that can measure your heart rate, but if you know how to take your pulse, you can get by with just a stopwatch or even a regular watch with a second hand.

What you'll do with those things is take the One-Mile Rockport Walking Test:

The one-mile walking test is an evaluation of cardiovascular fitness, that seeks to predict an individual’s aerobic capacity, which is also known as VO₂ max, or maximal oxygen consumption.

The one-mile walking test was developed by researchers in 1986 as an alternative assessment to accurately predict an individual’s aerobic capacity following a one-mile track walk. The test is both indirect and sub-maximal in nature, making it considerably easier to implement in field-based scenarios. While the test should be completed on a track or suitably flat terrain, it could reasonably be replicated on a treadmill.

The one-mile walking test is designed for both men and women aged 20-69 of varying levels of fitness. As the test only requires a participant to perform a brisk walk, it is also suitable for deconditioned participants, older adults, or those that are overweight.

Research conducted in 2011 found the one-mile walk test to be a valid predictor of VO2 max and a reliable alternative to the 1.5-mile run test that is widely used by the military.

Pretty impressive, right? HFE gives the following instructions to do it, which we've given a minor tweak:

  • If available, attach the heart rate monitor and ensure that it is correctly measuring heart rate
  • Start the stopwatch and commence walking
  • Walk the planned route as quickly as possible without running or skipping
  • Ensure that throughout the test, there is always 1-foot on the ground
  • On completion of the distance, stop the clock and record the heart rate immediately

Our minor tweak is to the first step, where we added the words "if available". If you don't have a heart rate monitor available, take your pulse for fifteen seconds after completing the distance. You can then find your heart rate by multiplying the beats you count by four, which will determine your heart's beats-per-minute.

From here, you'll take your "as quick as possible" walking time for the mile, your heart's beats per minute at the end, your sex, your weight (in pounds), and your age and enter them in the following tool we built to use this information in a formula that will estimate your VO2 max. We've set the following tool up with some default data, please substitute your own data to get your results. If you're accessing this article on a site that republishes our RSS news feed, you may need to click through to our site to access a working version of the tool.

Personal Data
Input Data Values
Age [years]
Sex [Male or Female]
Weight [pounds]
Walking Test Heart Rate Data
Input Data Values
Pulse [Beats per Minute]
Walking Test Time Data
Input Data Minutes Seconds
"As Quick As Possible" One-Mile Walking Time

Rockwell Walking Test Results
Calculated Results Values
VO₂ max

Once you have your results, compare them with the information in the following tables, which are also available at HFE's site:

Rockwell Walking Test Results Evaluation Tables for Men and Women

The default data in the tool gives a VO₂ max value of 48.03 for our hypothetical 30-year-old, 180-pound man who walked one mile in 12 mintues and 15 seconds while their heart rate at the end clocked in at 164 beats per minute (which is what you would enter in the tool if you took your pulse for 15 seconds at the end of the walk, counted 41 beats, then multiplied this figure by four). According to the tables, our fast-walking test taker would be considered to be average in cardiovascular fitness for their age group (Age 21-30) and sex.

Remember to substitute your own data! Afterward, you will have a much better idea of how fit you really are. Best of all, you didn't have to strap on any strange breathing apparatus while hooked up to monitoring machines that go "beep"!

Update Bonus video!

HT: ACSH.

Image Credit: Person in white and black nike shoes photo by Sincerely Media on Unsplash.

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- posted by Ironman at 5:10 AM | Permalink | Home |

About Political Calculations

Welcome to the blogosphere's toolchest! Here, unlike other blogs dedicated to analyzing current events, we create easy-to-use, simple tools to do the math related to them so you can get in on the action too! If you would like to learn more about these tools, or if you would like to contribute ideas to develop for this blog, please e-mail us at:

ironman at politicalcalculations

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