Stop me if you’ve heard this before: The stock market is at record concentration levels. A handful of companies are driving market returns. There’s an AI bubble. FAANG stocks. The Magnificent Seven.

The names change, but the message is familiar. Today, much of the attention is focused on a handful of large technology companies at the center of the AI boom. Their strong performance has made them increasingly influential in the U.S. stock market, and the headlines can make it feel like investors need to do something about it.

The concentration is real. But before reacting to it, an evidence-based investor should step back, put on their Long View lens, and ask a more useful question: What does this actually mean for my portfolio?

The S&P 500 Has Become More Concentrated

Concentration, in investing terms, refers to how much of a portfolio is allocated to a particular stock, sector, country, or other category.

By almost any measure, the S&P 500 is considerably more concentrated today than it was a decade ago:

Portfolio	Largest Sector Weight	Top Ten Companies Weight
S&P 500	Technology – 38%	38%
S&P 500 – 10 years ago	Technology – 20%	19%

Data as of June 30, 2026; June 30, 2016 for historical S&P 500.

That matters because concentration makes a portfolio more dependent on a smaller number of outcomes. When a handful of companies represent a large portion of your portfolio, unexpected news that changes the market’s expectations for those companies can have an outsized impact on your results.

But there is an important distinction: the S&P 500 is not your portfolio.

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A Global Portfolio Looks Different

Hill Investment Group portfolios aren’t built around the 500 largest companies in a single country. They are built globally, with exposure to more than 14,000 companies across 47 countries.

That changes the picture meaningfully:

Portfolio	Largest Sector Weight	Top Ten Companies Weight
S&P 500	Technology – 38%	38%
HIG Global Portfolio	Technology – 28%	22%

Data as of June 30, 2026.

Global diversification naturally reduces the portfolio’s dependence on any single company, sector, or country. The companies driving today’s U.S. market concentration are still there—we own them too—but they represent a smaller portion of the overall portfolio.

Diversification doesn’t mean avoiding the biggest or most successful companies. It means not making your financial future overly dependent on them.

If today’s technology leaders continue to thrive, HIG portfolios participate in that growth. If leadership shifts to different companies, sectors, or countries, we own those too. We don’t need to predict which outcome will occur.

HIG portfolios look much more like the global economy, deviating only when the evidence suggests that doing so can improve expected outcomes for investors.

Built for This Already

Your plan isn’t changing, because it doesn’t need to. Headlines about market concentration can make it feel like investors need to respond to something new. Diversification is one of the oldest ideas in evidence-based investing, and your portfolio has been built for markets like this one since the day we put it together.

Your portfolio includes thousands of companies across developed and emerging markets, large and small, spanning every sector of the global economy. It also leans toward companies with characteristics the evidence associates with higher expected returns: smaller companies, lower relative prices, and stronger profitability.

That structure isn’t designed around today’s headlines. It’s designed for a future we can’t predict.
When one part of the market performs particularly well, the portfolio systematically rebalances rather than allowing yesterday’s winners to dictate tomorrow’s allocation. When market leadership changes, the portfolio already owns the companies positioned to benefit.

That concentration story is real. It’s just about a portfolio built differently than yours.

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