New York, Dec 31 (IANS): The S&P 500 index is closing in on a fresh record high as 2023 draws to a close. Unfortunately for stock pickers, many of the index's constituents remain well below their highs from January 2022, MarketWatch reported.

This has led to a striking divide between the US market's "haves" and "have nots", a dynamic that has resulted in what eToro's Callie Cox recently described as "the weirdest-looking bull (market) in decades", MarketWatch reported.

Both Cox and Apollo's Torsten Slok have been closely tracking the share of S&P 500 SPX members that have been underperforming the index.

Slok pointed out in emailed commentary that at 72 per cent, the share of S&P 500 underperformers is on track for a record in 2023.

To be sure, this divergence is nothing new.

So-called "bad breadth" in the US stock market has been a hot topic on Wall Street practically all year, MarketWatch reported.

Many analysts have expressed concern that the US market has become too top-heavy as a handful of megacap stocks, nicknamed "the Magnificent Seven" by CNBC's Jim Cramer and a coterie of analysts, drove virtually all of the index's gains, spurred by the artificial-intelligence boom.