The S&P 500 hit a fresh all-time high on Tuesday, yet the lion's share of its members are nowhere near one.

In Tuesday's New York trading, only 15 of its 504 stocks shared the record.

That is 3% of the index.

So how can an index sit at a record when 97% of its stocks are not?

The Average S&P 500 Stock Is Still in a Bear Market

The typical S&P 500 stock is still in a bear market.

According to TradingView data, the median member in the S&P 500 trades 25% below its own all-time high.

In addition, 294 stocks, or 58% of the index, sit at least 20% below their records. Meanwhile, 88 stocks are still down 50% or more from their peaks.

The year-to-date picture shows the same split.

The S&P 500, tracked by the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (NYSE:SPY), is up 13.8% in 2026.

Yet, the median stock is up only 3.5%, and 220 members, or 44%, are down for the year.

The equal-weight version of the index makes the gap clearer. The Invesco S&P 500 Equal Weight ETF (NYSE:RSP) trades at $212.10, 5.1% below its record of $223.44.

The gap between the cap-weighted S&P 500 and its equal-weight version has never been wider. The ratio between SPY and RSP just hit a record high, meaning a few giants are doing more of the work than ever.

Why One Company Can Carry the S&P 500 to a Record High

The S&P 500 is weighted by market value. A company worth $5 trillion moves the index far more than one worth $50 billion.

The 15 record-setters are worth a combined $8.7 trillion, about 11.5% of the index's total value. Nvidia Corp. (NASDAQ:NVDA) alone accounts for $5.8 trillion of that, two-thirds of the group.

That explains the paradox.

Nvidia, up 26.5% this year, is the only one of the 10 largest S&P 500 stocks at a record on Tuesday. The rest of the mega-cap group is still catching up.

Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) is 3.6% below its high and Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ:MSFT) is 4.4% below. Meta Platforms Inc. (NASDAQ:META) is 6.6% below, Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) is 10.7% below and Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOGL) is 14.7% below.

Further back, Broadcom Inc. (NASDAQ:AVGO) and Tesla Inc. (NASDAQ:TSLA) both sit roughly 24% under their peaks.

Chips and Cybersecurity Dominate the Record List

The 15 names share a clear theme. Most of them sell the hardware and security behind the artificial-intelligence buildout.

Seven are data-center hardware plays.

Besides Nvidia, the list includes Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (NASDAQ:AMD), connector maker Amphenol Corp. (NYSE:APH), optical-component supplier Lumentum Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ:LITE), Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co. (NYSE:HPE), Keysight Technologies Inc. (NYSE:KEYS) and data-storage company Everpure Inc. (NYSE:P), formerly Pure Storage.

AMD led the group on Tuesday, up 3.7%. Citigroup raised its price target on the stock to $800 from $575. AMD shares have nearly tripled this year, up 199%.

Four are cybersecurity and network-security names: Palo Alto Networks Inc. (NASDAQ:PANW), CrowdStrike Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ:CRWD), Fortinet Inc. (NASDAQ:FTNT) and F5 Inc. (NASDAQ:FFIV). Palo Alto, CrowdStrike and Fortinet have each more than doubled in 2026.

The rest of the list comes from outside technology.

Lab-equipment makers Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. (NYSE:TMO) and Waters Corp. (NYSE:WAT) both set intraday records before turning lower.

In addition, refiner Valero Energy Corp. (NYSE:VLO), up 158% this year, and building-systems company Johnson Controls International plc (NYSE:JCI) made the list.