"Ring! Ring! It's 7:00 A.M.!
Move y'self to go again
Cold water in the face
Brings you back to this awful place"
So begins the song “The Magnificent Seven” from The Clash's seminal 1980 album Sandinista!. Forty-five years later, Joe Strummer's lyrics still feel like a splash of cold water in the face.
The song, which borrowed its title from the popular 1960 cowboy movie1, decries the dehumanizing effects of work culture, capitalism and consumerism. It's an insightful and scathing commentary packaged in a super-catchy hip-hop song2.
Sadly, not much has changed in the past 45 years. The same social woes are still alive and well today.
Even more disheartening is that it might be more of the same 45 years from now.
We humans have a knack for looking for happiness in the wrong places. To quote Mr. Strummer:
"Gimme Honda, gimme Sony
So cheap and real phony”
Consumerism.
Workin' for a raise, better my station
Take my baby to Sophistication
She's seen the ads, she thinks it's nice
Better work hard, I seen the price
Status.
It's no good for man to work in cages
Hits the town, he drinks his wages"
Distraction.
These things keep the world turning. And suffering.
The Magnificent Seven 2025 Remix
We still suffer like we did four decades ago, but the world has changed in that time.
Change, after all, is non-negotiable in this universe we live in.
We need look no further than the stock market to see how *much* the world has changed in the interim.
Back in 1980, when people were grooving to The Clash on the radio, the stock market was dominated by these companies3:
These companies are still kicking around, but the intervening 45 years haven't been kind to them, General Motors in particular. It used to be the 7th most valuable company in the world, but now it's scraping the bottom of the barrel of the S&P 500 with a market cap of $50,840,000,000 (as of July 25, 2025).
$50 billion is a HUGE chunk of change, but it doesn't stand for much in the stock market of 2025.
To crack the top ten stocks these days, you need a market cap exceeding $1,000,000,000,000. That’s $1 trillion dollars.
The trillion-dollar club includes companies that we all know (and maybe even own): Apple, Google/Alphabet, Meta/Facebook, Microsoft, NVIDIA and Tesla.
If Joe Strummer had written “The Magnificent Seven” today, it probably would have been in reference to the nickname given to these 7 behemoth companies—the “Mag 7” for short:
NVIDIA, the current darling of the market, is the most valuable company EVER, with a market cap of $4.231 Trillion (as of July 25, 2025). To put this number in perspective, $4T is equal to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of Japan or India. Yes, that's right, NVIDIA's current value is equal to Japan's entire economic output in a year.
The entire Mag 7 is valued at $18.85 Trillion. The seven stocks together make up about one-third of the total worth of the US stock market. They make up about 9% of my own portfolio. This is how much of my primary holding VGRO, an all-in-one ETF, is allocated to the Mag 7. Seven stocks make up for 9%, while the other 91% of value is made up of a mix of 13,000 stocks and 19,000 bonds. Talk about skewed.
The Mag 7 dwarf everything else out there. And they just keep getting bigger and bigger:
From “Magnificent” to “Meh”: The truth of impermanence
IBM, AT&T and the other “Mag 7”-ish stocks of the early 1980s probably looked just as unstoppable. But the party eventually ended, and they went from “magnificent” to “meh.”
It’s only a matter of time before the “Mag 7” becomes the “Meh 7” or “Lag 7”. The funeral bell has already started to toll:
The Mag 7 might hold on for another 5, 10 or 20 years, but eventually they will fall. They will be dethroned as new, disruptive upstarts come on the scene. IBM, AT&T and GM had no idea what was coming when Apple, the oldest of the Mag 7 stocks, first IPO’d on December 12, 19804.
It’s anyone’s guess which companies are coming for the Mag 7. But they’re out there, waiting for their chance to pounce.
Such is the nature of capitalism. All companies, no matter how big or seemingly unstoppable, are subject to its relentless, ruthless churn.
This endless cycle of corporate rise and fall mirrors Buddhism's central insight: impermanence. Just as the Buddha observed that all phenomena are in constant flux, so are the fortunes of even the mightiest corporations.
We’re subject to the same flux in our lives. “It’s up one day and down the next” to paraphrase John Prine, another master songwriter. Fortunes rise and fall, loved ones come and go, and our bodies eventually betray us.
“The Magnificent Eight”
The Buddha’s “Mag 8”—the Noble Eightfold Path—offers a framework for navigating incessant change as gracefully as possible.
We will find a more peaceful life if we tread thoughtfully and compassionately on each of the eight steps of this path:
The “Magnificent 8” wakes us up to the possibility of a more peaceful life like a cold splash of water to the face.
And with this awakening we can start the work of reducing our suffering and healing the pain of the world we live in, so that it isn’t the same old song 45 years from now. [Even if it happens to be a super-catchy one!]
- The Buddh-ish Investor
I’d love to hear from you! Email at Sangha@TheBuddhishInvestor.com or drop a comment below!
Take home points:
Today's trillion-dollar tech giants will fall just like yesterday's market leaders, illustrating Buddhism's core teaching that all things are impermanent.
The Buddha's 8-fold Path offers a framework for navigating market volatility and life's changes with less attachment and suffering.
If you’re looking for more:
Let ‘er rip:
A fascinating look at the evolution of the Top 10 Companies in S&P 500 from 1980-2022
A great overview of the Noble 8-fold Path from the Secular Buddhism podcast
While the song’s title is a clear reference to the 1960 American cowboy movie of the same name, it's not entirely clear how this fits with the theme of the song. Some have suggested that it evokes the Mag 7 cowboys as a symbol of US global economic dominance. Others think that the "7" of the title refers to the 7 days of the week or the jarring 7AM alarm clock ring that starts the day.
Possibly the first hip-hop song ever recorded by a British group—fun fact!
Source: City Index trading platform, as reported in "The most valuable companies in the world: 1980, 2000 and 2023" published on organisator.ch (September 13, 2023). Available at: https://www.organisator.ch/en/management/2023-09-13/die-wertvollsten-unternehmen-der-welt-1980-2000-und-2023/
Apple IPO’d at a stock price $22. It currently trades at $200 a share!