The Financial Post reports in its Saturday edition that the Magnificent Seven's magnificence cannot be solely attributed to the performance of their stock prices. Guest columnist Noah Soloman writes that the underlying fundamentals of Apple, Microsoft, Nvidia, Meta Platforms, Amazon, Alphabet and Tesla are impressive, too. Apple's brand value provides it with a moat that protects it from both existing and potential competitors. The advertising power of Alphabet and Meta is nearly unassailable. Cloud infrastructure has been effectively duopolized by Amazon and Microsoft. Nvidia is the world's premier GPU (graphics processing unit) manufacturer. The bottom line is that these seven companies are well deserving of premium valuations. The more relevant question is whether the size of their premiums reflects excessive optimism, and whether they are likely to continue to deliver market-crushing stock performance. At the start of the decade, Apple, Microsoft and Alphabet had a combined P/E ratio of 15 compared with the market's P/E of 18.2, which provided them with a healthy base for future outperformance. These companies, alongside their Magnificent Seven peers, also managed to increase their earnings at a ferocious clip.