The Dividend Cafe · Oct 12, 2026
With David Bahnsen, CIO & Managing Partner, The Bahnsen Group
Photo via Orange County Business Journal
The top five companies in the S&P 500 are now worth as much, by market cap, as the bottom 434 combined.
Most investors read a nearly flat index day as evidence of a calm market; David Bahnsen, Chief Investment Officer and Managing Partner of The Bahnsen Group, wrote in Monday's Dividend Cafe that the calm is an illusion created by a handful of stocks.
"The top five companies in the S&P 500 are right now equal to the bottom 434 companies in the index in terms of market cap. This is the highest in history."
David writes the Dividend Cafe daily from The Bahnsen Group, and this edition draws on research from S&P, Baird, Barclays, Goldman Sachs and FactSet's IRN platform, the same sourcing stack behind every edition.
The full commentary is covered here so you can skip it.
Here are the 6 numbers that matter.
Key Takeaways
The average S&P 500 stock moved 8.9% last month while the index moved just 0.8% — a gap he calls among the widest in 30 years
The top 5 S&P 500 companies are now worth as much as the bottom 434 combined, the highest concentration in history
The US savings rate is at an 18-year low, even as "the consumer is spending" gets treated as good news
The median home-price-to-income ratio has widened from 3.5x in 1980 to 5x today, a 43% gap even after adjusting for inflated incomes
Futures markets price an 88% chance the Fed hikes rates by year end — not the cut much of the market is positioned for
A "massive chunk" of the AI data-center buildout depends on just two companies, OpenAI and Anthropic, in a Peter Boockvar quote Bahnsen featured
1. A Historically Thin Market
Bahnsen opened with a breadth statistic rather than a headline index move, arguing that Monday's quiet session concealed an unusually divided market underneath.
The average stock moved ten times more than the index did
"The S&P moved +0.8% over the last month. The average stock moved 8.9% on the month, a delta of 8.1% that is among the highest we have seen in 30 years." — David Bahnsen
He warned that earnings season's "growth" is really a handful of purchase orders
"The so-called 'earnings growth' percentages being thrown around are basically a few companies from one sector with a low 'base effect' receiving massive purchase orders. The future expectation there is, shall we say, important to this trade. And it is a trade." — David Bahnsen
He also noted the S&P 500's top five companies are now equal in market cap to the bottom 434 combined, which he called the highest concentration in history, and flagged the Investors Intelligence bull/bear spread as sitting at an extreme level worth watching for contrarians.
