Equities

Two-thirds of the S&P 500's profit growth is coming from just 10 companies, the WSJ reports

Nvidia and Micron account for 34% of expected third-quarter growth, per Dow Jones Market Data. FactSet says the index's growth rate drops to 20.0% from 29.0% without them.

By Marcus Rodriguez · Oct 25, 2026, 6:00 AM EDT

Why it matters: The S&P 500's strong earnings rest on a few companies; FactSet says growth drops to 20.0% from 29.0% without Micron and Nvidia.

For information only, not investment advice. Prices delayed.

Tickers: NVDA, MU

The S&P 500's earnings boom has a concentration problem. Ten companies, including Nvidia ($NVDA), Micron ($MU) and other AI giants, account for roughly two-thirds of corporate profit growth, the Wall Street Journal reported. Just two of them, Nvidia and Micron, account for 34% of the third-quarter earnings growth analysts expect, according to a Dow Jones Market Data analysis cited by the Journal.

The headline number looks great. Analysts expect S&P 500 companies to report a 30% jump in third-quarter earnings from a year ago, according to FactSet figures cited by the Journal. The catch, as the Journal put it, is that the profit growth is being driven by a handful of AI giants.

Take out two companies and the boom shrinks

FactSet's own data tell a similar story. Micron and Nvidia are the top two contributors to S&P 500 earnings growth for the third quarter, FactSet senior earnings analyst John Butters wrote on Oct 19. Without them, the index's blended growth rate, which mixes reported results with estimates for companies yet to report, would fall to 20.0% from 29.0%.

Other tallies land in the same neighborhood, though the exact figures differ by source and date:

• TokenPost reported on Oct 13 that the 10 largest contributors are expected to account for 68% of S&P 500 earnings growth, up from 47% in the first quarter and 48% in the second. It did not say whose estimates those were.
• Citadel Securities figures, as cited by a Compounding Quality newsletter, put Micron and Nvidia at 36% of expected growth, and the newsletter said excluding the top ten drops expected growth to around 9%.
• TokenPost also said the median S&P 500 company is expected to post 9% earnings-per-share growth, down from 14% in the second quarter.

That last number is the one the headline rate hides. The typical company's earnings are growing far more slowly than the index's.

Not all of it is AI

FactSet's top five contributors, in order, are Micron, Nvidia, Meta Platforms, EchoStar and Boeing. Butters noted that Meta, EchoStar and Boeing are all benefiting from easy comparisons, because their year-ago earnings included big charges. So part of the concentration is about who had a bad quarter a year ago, not just who is selling AI chips.

FactSet also puts estimated third-quarter growth for the "Magnificent 7" at 33.2%, against a 27.7% blended rate for the other 493 S&P 500 companies. Looking ahead, analysts expect that to flip in the fourth quarter, 23.6% versus 30.6%. That would be the first time since Q4 2022 that the group grew earnings more slowly than the rest of the index, FactSet said.

As for the two biggest contributors to expected earnings growth, Micron was up 2.46% at $877.55 and Nvidia was down 0.59% at $210.96, both as of Oct 23, 4:00 PM ET.

All of these are estimates in the middle of earnings season, and they will likely change as more companies report. For now, the story is the same from every angle: a very small number of companies are doing most of the work.

Tags: earnings · ai · semiconductors · big-tech · analysts