The Globe and Mail reports in its Saturday edition that the outlook for global stock markets in 2024 rests to a surprising extent on seven U.S. stocks commonly known as the Magnificent Seven: Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia and Tesla. The Globe's Ian McGugan writes that their success has reached the point where even optimists have to wonder how much juice can be left in the can. The combined market value of the Magnificent Seven now equals the total value of all publicly listed stocks in Canada, Japan and Britain. Mr. McGugan says his first reaction was to side with the bears and veer away from the Magnificent Seven. The mad love for these companies evokes past episodes of investor insanity. However, the more he looked at the Magnificent Seven, the more rationally priced they appeared to be. By the metric of earnings per share, the seven are not much of a bargain. The catch, though, is that P/E ratios do not mean much by themselves. You have to adjust them for how fast companies are increasing their earnings. All things being equal, companies such as the Magnificent Seven that are expanding their profits at a breakneck pace should fetch P/E ratios considerably higher than more plodding businesses.