The Mag 7 Just Quietly Fractured
The sector signal says 'bullish, high confidence.' The individual scores range from bearish to bullish. The basket has stopped trading like a basket.
Composite-score spread inside the Mag 7
44 pts
▲ +44 TSLA 34 → MSFT/AMZN 78
Today the MarketDecode sector view for the Mag 7 reads bullish, high confidence, conviction 0.81. Inside that same basket, the individual composite scores range from 34 (Tesla, bearish) to 78 (Microsoft and Amazon). A 44-point spread inside one trade. Six of nine names are dragged down by the same negative factor — insider selling. Today's strongest sector wasn't the Mag 7 at all. It was China.
The contradiction
The sector reads bullish. The individual companies that make up the sector disagree with each other by 44 points.
What the headline says
Mag 7 sector signal, today
Bullish · 0.81
What the data says
Composite scores within the basket
34 → 78
Chapter 01
The contradiction in plain sight
The sector signal averages out a 44-point gap between the best and worst Mag 7 names.
If you only looked at the aggregate signal today, the Magnificent Seven would look healthy. The sector view reads bullish, high confidence, conviction 0.81. That single number is the institutional consensus that the basket works. But the sector signal is an average. The individual scores it averages over range from 34 at the bottom — Tesla, classified bearish — to 78 at the top, where Microsoft and Amazon both sit. A 44-point spread inside one basket. Same data, two opposite stories, depending on whether you read the headline or the table beneath it.
"Same data, two opposite stories, depending on whether you read the headline or the table beneath it."
Composite score by Mag 7 name, today
Source: MarketDecode composite scores, May 13 mid-day edition
Bottom of basket
TSLA 34bearish — the only one
Top of basket
MSFT/AMZN 78bullish, high confidence
Gap
44 ptsinside one basket
Chapter 02
Six of nine names are dragged down by the same factor
Six of the nine biggest tech names have "insider selling" listed in their score breakdown as a negative factor today.
Below the composite-score layer, every score is built from factors. One of those factors is the insider tape, and right now it is unusually one-sided. Six of the nine biggest names — AAPL, NVDA, GOOGL, AVGO, AMD, TSLA, META — have 'insider_selling' explicitly listed as a negative factor in their composite breakdown today. AAPL is the most extreme: net minus four hundred and six point seven million dollars over the trailing window, dominated by chairman Arthur D. Levinson selling roughly four hundred million dollars in a single batch on May 6. NVIDIA: minus ninety-seven point six. Alphabet: minus ninety-two point seven. The aggregate is a net withdrawal of capital by the people who know these companies best.
Net insider transactions, trailing window
Source: MarketDecode insider transaction feeds, trailing window through May 13
Largest seller
AAPL−$406.7M trailing
Only non-seller
MSFTnet zero
Spread
~$407MAAPL minus MSFT
Chapter 03
Two names are doing the opposite — insiders are buying
Microsoft and Amazon are the only Mag 7 names where insider buying is a POSITIVE factor. Their buy-to-sell counts are 22-to-1 and 20-to-3.
Two names break the pattern: Microsoft and Amazon. Microsoft's insider tape over the trailing window is twenty-two buys against a single sell. Penny Pritzker, Charles Scharf, John Rainey, Hugh Johnston — directors and former directors — all bought stock on the same day in late January. Amazon's tape is twenty buys against three sells on a much larger dollar basis: AWS CEO Matthew Garman, Worldwide Stores CEO Doug Herrington, and Senior VP David Zapolsky all bought sizeable positions on April 8. These are the only two Mag 7 names whose composite breakdown lists 'insider_buying' as a positive contribution. Every other name lists 'insider_selling' as a negative one. The line is bright.
"Two names whose insiders are buying. Seven whose insiders are selling. One basket."
Insider buys minus sells, trailing window
Source: MarketDecode insider transaction feeds (buyCount − sellCount)
Most positive
MSFT 2122 buys / 1 sell
Most negative
AAPL −6526 buys / 91 sells
Names above zero
2 of 9MSFT, AMZN
Chapter 04
The Mag 7 isn't leading the market today
Eleven sector views. Mag 7 +0.79% — only the third best. China & International +3.55% — the actual leader.
There is a second contradiction underneath the first one. The Mag 7 is supposed to BE the market — for two years it has been the engine of every major index move. Today it is the third-best-performing sector that MarketDecode tracks, behind AI/Semiconductors and well behind China & International. The Mag 7 is up zero point seven nine percent. AI/Semis is up one point zero nine. China and International is up three point five five. Every other sector — Energy, Healthcare, Industrials, Banking, Consumer, Housing, Crypto — is in the red. Leadership has narrowed to two themes today, and the cleaner one is not the basket everyone already owns.
Sector 1-day return, by MarketDecode sector view
Source: MarketDecode sector views, May 13 mid-day edition
Best sector
China 3.55%conviction 0.81
Mag 7 rank
#3 of 11+0.79%
Sectors red
8 of 11broad weakness
Chapter 05
Today's spotlight is on Alibaba — not a Mag 7 name
Today's only Market Spotlight card is BABA, +6.68%, mention-velocity z-score +2.13, flagged as a major sentiment shift.
MarketDecode's spotlight engine — the system that picks the single most important market narrative of the session — has exactly one card today. It is not a Mag 7 ticker. It is Alibaba. The price is up six point six eight percent on a profit slump, against a benchmark essentially flat. The mention-velocity z-score is plus two point one three: the volume of news and analyst commentary about Alibaba right now is more than two standard deviations above its normal baseline. The system flagged the move as a 'major sentiment shift,' with a published headline of 'Alibaba rallies despite profit slump as AI bets reshape narrative.' This is not a Mag 7 story. But the timing — the same day the Mag 7's internals fracture — is what makes it relevant.
BABA spotlight score components, today
Source: MarketDecode spotlight engine, May 13 mid-day card #1 of 1
BABA today
6.68%vs SPY ~flat
Mention velocity
z = 2.132σ above baseline
Spotlight cards
1 of 1BABA only
Chapter 06
The indices that hold this basket are deeply overbought
SPY RSI 83.3, QQQ RSI 84.7. Both well past the conventional overbought threshold of 70.
Two final numbers worth holding in your head. The S&P 500's 14-day RSI today is eighty-three point three. The Nasdaq-100 — the index dominated by these exact Magnificent Seven names — is eighty-four point seven. The conventional threshold for 'overbought' is seventy. Both indices are not just overbought; they are deep in a zone that historically tends to precede mean-reversion. The Russell 2000, the small-cap index, sits at sixty-six. Well below seventy. Normal range. That tells you the heat is concentrated in the largest names — the same names whose internals we just walked through.
"Aggregate indices look healthy precisely because the strong names are doing the work of carrying the weaker ones."
14-day RSI by index
Source: MarketDecode index snapshot, May 13 mid-day edition
SPY RSI (14d)
83.28overbought
QQQ RSI (14d)
84.66overbought
IWM RSI (14d)
66.05normal band
Resolution window — 2 weeks
What would confirm or invalidate this read
Confirmation
The composite-score gap between TSLA/AAPL (bottom) and MSFT/AMZN (top) widens beyond 44 points, OR insider selling persists across at least 5 of the 7 names dragged down today.
Invalidation
The Mag 7 composite spread compresses back below 25 points and 5+ names return to a uniform composite band, OR insider buying broadens beyond just MSFT and AMZN.