The Financial Post reports in its Thursday edition the S&P 500 Index would be a lot higher if three of its most influential stocks were not lagging behind. A Bloomberg dispatch to the Post says that Apple has seen its shares drop 16 per cent this year amid tariff concerns and problems developing artificial intelligence services. Alphabet, the $2.1-trillion (U.S.) ad giant, is down 7 per cent amid fears that AI chatbots will eat into its Google search business. Meanwhile, Tesla is down 23 per cent amid slumping electric-vehicle sales. Those three stocks have been a more than 120-point drag on the market-capitalization-weighted S&P 500, which closed Tuesday with a gain of 5 per cent this year. All else equal, if the trio were to at least erase losses for 2025, the benchmark would be about two percentage points higher. After leading the market higher for more than two years, Magnificent Seven stocks have diverged in 2025 with Microsoft, Nvidia and Meta all up 14 per cent or more. The most common difference between winners and losers in 2025 has been AI: Companies such as Nvidia have capitalized on computing infrastructure spending while those such as Meta have utilized the technology to drive revenue growth.