The seven companies driving the US stock market rally

STOCK markets in 2023 are not quite what they seem.

At first glance, the pessimists are taking a beating. Investors and influential analysts had entered the year expecting 2022’s aggressive series of interest-rate rises to bite. The consensus was for an economic recession to hit the US, dragging stocks down.

That has not happened, despite a series of regional bank failures in the spring that compounded the impact of rising rates. The American economy is still growing, and the S&P 500 index, which measures the performance of US blue-chip stocks and sets the tone for investors around the world, has climbed more than 14 per cent this year. With two weeks still to go, this is already one of the best half-years for the index in two decades.