TECH BLOATED TUNE : BUSINESS WARNING ESSAY

THE S&P 500 is made up of 11 district sectors, though just a few dominate it. The tech industry today makes up 32 percent of the entire value of the stock index - $20 trillion out of a total value of $63 trillion.

The five biggest public companies in the United States are worth almost a third of the entire index.  They are all wildly profitable tech firms in one way or another even though Amazon and Alphabet are categorized into other sectors.

Nvidia, the chipmaker that became the world's most valuable public company two years ago, was alone worth $4.5 trillion as of last month.

It's value or market capitalization, is more than double the combined worth of all the companies in the energy sector including oil giants like Exxon Mobil and Chevron.

The chipmaker's market cap has swelled so much recently, it is now 14 percent greater than the sum of all of the companies in the materials, utilities and real sectors combined.

What unifies these giant tech companies is artificial intelligence. Nvidia makes the hardware that powers it.

Microsoft, Apple and others have been making big bets on products that people can use in their daily lives.

But as worries grow on lavish spending of A.I., as well as the technology's potential to disrupt large parts of the economy, the outsize influence that these companies exert over markets has raised alarms.

They can mask underlying risks in other parts of the index. And if a handful of these giants falter, it could mean widespread damage to investors portfolios and retirement funds in ways that could ripple more broadly across the economy.

PAST CRISES : The dynamic has drawn comparisons to past crises, notably the dot-com bubble.

Tech companies also made up a large share of the stock index then - though not as much as today, and many were not not nearly as profitable, if they made money at all.

The World Students Society thanks Jacqueline GU.