My Personal Magnificent 7 Is Down 34 Points to the Mag 7 — and I Couldn't Be Calmer

TL;DR In early 2025 I built a 'personal Magnificent 7' out of seven overlooked, undervalued names instead of the real Mag 7. A year and a half later the Mag 7 is up 20% and my basket is down 14% — a 34-point gap. I'm completely fine with it, because in the short run the market is a voting machine and in the long run it's a weighing machine.

I bet directly against the market's favorite story

While everyone obsessed over the Magnificent 7 in early 2025, I took the other side.

Instead of the so-called market leaders, I picked seven under-the-radar names — Ulta Beauty, Southwest Airlines, PayPal, Alibaba, Adobe, Nike, and Sprouts Farmers Market. Nothing hyped, nothing inflated. Just businesses that struck me as smart and undervalued, the kind the market keeps missing.

And from day one I set a rule: I'd track these picks quarter by quarter and compare them head-to-head against the Mag 7 and the broader market. This piece is that scoreboard, kept honestly.

The scoreboard: what's happened so far

Let me give you the numbers straight — I'm losing.

• Last quarter: the real Mag 7 made 11%, my basket lost 3%
• First half of this year: Mag 7 down 2%, my basket down 19%
• Since the start of 2025: Mag 7 up 20%, my basket down 14% (a 34-point relative gap)

The individual swings are wilder. Southwest hit a high of +52%, Adobe a low of -52%. Alibaba was up 120% at one point and was really driving my returns — that same stock is now up just 17%. That's how fast things flip.

Here's what's interesting about the path, though. For a big chunk of the first quarter this year I was actually ahead of the Mag 7. Then the market bottomed, the Nasdaq took off, and the momentum-heavy megacaps ran on an index basis. When tech is ripping like that, I knew I'd get my butt kicked. I'm okay with it.

Short run, voting machine. Long run, weighing machine.

The reason I don't flinch fits in one Benjamin Graham line.

In the short run the market is a voting machine; in the long run it's a weighing machine.

I don't care about month-to-month or even year-to-year results. I care about one thing: do the businesses I own have good prospects, and can I buy them at a reasonable price today? I'm looking at the next 5, 10, 15 years and beyond.

So many people say they're long-term investors and then get upset over a bad quarter. It makes no sense. If you bought your neighbor's business outright, would you sell it tomorrow because the quoted price dipped — even though the business itself got better? Of course not. A publicly traded stock is no different.

Even when I was beating the Mag 7 in the first half of last year, I didn't change my tone or take a victory lap. I told people to pump the brakes because it was far too early. It still is.

Fang → Mag 7 → Mangoes, and whatever's next

There's one more thing that proves my whole point: Wall Street has already started chasing the next acronym.

The Mag 7 originally replaced 'Fang.' Now that the Mag 7 is wobbling, Wall Street is hyping a new group called 'Mangoes' — Meta, Anthropic, Nvidia, Google, OpenAI, and SpaceX. Some are terrific companies. But here's the punchline: two of the six, Anthropic and OpenAI, aren't even publicly traded. You literally cannot buy a third of the list.

Fang, then Mag 7, now Mangoes. When people got sick of Fang, we said they'd eventually get sick of the Mag 7 too — and here we are. There's always a new hot list to chase. Chasing hype isn't a strategy; it's how people buy high and get burned.

I pick on one thing only: price versus value

I don't buy what's popular this month. I buy on price relative to value — full stop.

Let me be blunt: you should never own a stock just because someone on the internet, or even Warren Buffett, owns it. The point here isn't to hand you a pick. It's to show you a process — to teach you to fish so you can sleep at night.

For my seven to trail the Mag 7 this badly, it took a massive bull market and a lot of hype breaking exactly right. Flip that around: with all those tailwinds, the Mag 7 only opened this much of a gap. I just need my businesses to grow naturally from here. I'll keep posting this scoreboard every quarter.

I broke down exactly what I own, and why, in two follow-ups: three undervalued retail names — Ulta, Sprouts, and Nike, and four contrarian stocks where the news is following the price.