Who Named the Magnificent Seven, and How to Own All Seven Onchain
Where the name came from, why these seven matter more than the other 493, and the routes to owning all of them from outside the United States.
Seven companies have carried the US stock market since 2023, and most of the world's investors have never held them directly. Here is where the name came from, why these seven matter more than the other 493, and the routes to owning all of them from outside the United States, including the one that takes a single transaction.
Where the name came from
In May 2023 Michael Hartnett, chief investment strategist at Bank of America, needed a label for the handful of companies that were pulling the entire US market upward on their own. He borrowed it from a Western he loved, the 1960 film with Yul Brynner and Steve McQueen, and called them the Magnificent Seven.
The seven are Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, Nvidia, Meta and Tesla. The name stuck because it described something real. By December of that year the seven were up around 70 percent for the year. The S&P 500 was up more than 21 percent. Take the seven out, and the other 493 companies were up about 6 percent.
Why seven companies matter more than the other 493
The seven are not a theme. They are the market. In 2014 they made up 9.8 percent of the S&P 500's value. By the end of 2023 that was 30.1 percent, and by mid-2024 it was 34.6 percent, close to sixteen trillion dollars inside an index worth forty-six trillion.
Two things follow from that. An investor who holds a broad US index already holds the seven, at roughly a third of every dollar, whether they meant to or not. And an investor who does not hold them has spent three years watching most of the market's return go to companies they never bought.
The reason is not mysterious. The seven own the platforms that the rest of the economy rents: the phones, the cloud, the search, the marketplace, the chips, the social graph, the electric car. Capturing the growth of technology in full has come to mean holding these seven, in a proportion you chose rather than one the index handed you.
What stands between you and the seven, from outside the US
Access. A US brokerage account is not open to everyone, and the international brokers that offer US stocks come with minimums, verification queues and a menu that varies by country.
Seven separate orders. Building the position by hand means seven trades, seven fees and seven fills, and then keeping the seven in proportion as they move at different speeds.
Market hours. The US market trades from 9.30 in the morning to 4 in the afternoon New York time. In Singapore that is the middle of the night. In London it is the evening. A position you can only adjust while asleep is a position you rarely adjust.
Withholding. For investors in countries without a tax treaty with the United States, 30 percent of any dividend is withheld at source. The seven pay little in dividends, so the cost is small, but it is there.
The routes, side by side
| Route | What you do | What you hold | When it trades | Who keeps the assets |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| International broker | Open an account, place seven orders, rebalance by hand | Seven stocks, in the broker's custody | US market hours | The broker |
| A Magnificent Seven fund | One order through a broker that lists it | Units in a fund, which holds the stocks | US market hours | The fund's custodian |
| Tokenized stocks, one by one | Seven swaps into tokenized shares, rebalance by hand | Seven tokens in your own wallet | Around the clock | You |
| The Magnificent Seven OTP | One transaction | Seven tokenized shares in your own account, bought at the published weights and left to follow the market | Around the clock | You |
The first two routes give you the seven inside someone else's account, on someone else's hours. The third gives you the seven in your own account and leaves you to maintain them. The fourth gives you the seven in your own account and maintains them for you.
What “in full” means
Holding the seven in full means three things at once. You own the shares themselves rather than a claim on a pool. You hold them in a proportion you chose at purchase, and from there the weights follow the market, so a strong year for one name shows up as a larger share of your position instead of being trimmed away. And you can act on any one of the seven on its own, selling one, keeping six, whenever you decide.
The Magnificent Seven OTP on BNB Chain is built to those three conditions. It buys the seven tokenized shares at one seventh each into an account you own, leaves the weights to follow the market from there, changes the list only if the published rule adds or drops a name, and lets you sell any one of them without touching the rest.
How to do it onchain, in three steps
- 1Sign in and fund your account with stablecoins on BNB Chain. Signing in creates the smart account the seven will live in.
- 2Open Explore, choose the Magnificent Seven OTP, and read the product page. It shows the seven names, the weights at purchase, the rule that can change the list and every change the product has made.
- 3Choose an amount and confirm. One transaction converts your stablecoins into the seven tokenized shares at one seventh each, in your own account. You can see all seven on a block explorer the moment it settles.
From then on the weights follow the market. The list changes only when the published rule changes it, every change is published before it executes, and nothing trades because a price moved.
What this route does not do
Tokenized shares carry the economic exposure their issuer states, and the issuer's terms decide how dividends and corporate actions are handled. Read them before you buy.
Prices can fall. Owning the seven in full means owning their drawdowns in full, and 2022 is a reminder that the seven can fall further than the market.
The tokenized shares in the product are offered to participants outside the United States only, and the product inherits that restriction.
Frequently asked questions
- Who named the Magnificent Seven?
- Michael Hartnett, chief investment strategist at Bank of America, in May 2023, after the 1960 Western of the same name.
- Which companies are in it?
- Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, Nvidia, Meta and Tesla.
- Is holding the OTP the same as holding the seven stocks?
- You hold seven tokenized shares in your own account, at one seventh each, and each one can be sold on its own. There is no fund unit in between.
- Can I buy it from my country?
- The product is offered to eligible participants outside the United States. Eligibility is checked at sign-in.
- What happens if one of the seven stops being magnificent?
- The methodology decides what changes the constituent list, and any change is published before it executes. Until then the basket holds the seven it named.
The bottom line
The seven companies that have carried the US market since 2023 can be held from almost anywhere, in an account you own, bought at one seventh each and left to run. The name came from a Western. The access came from putting the shares onchain.
Origin of the name and 2023 performance figures from NPR, 13 December 2023. Index weight figures from Visual Capitalist with data from Defiance ETFs, 11 December 2024. “Magnificent Seven” is a market term and implies no affiliation with, or endorsement by, any of the companies named. This post is for educational purposes only and does not constitute financial or legal advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any asset. Eligibility checks, KYC and jurisdiction limits apply.