It is easy to tell a simple story about the stock market at the moment. But it would be wrong.

The simple story is Big Tech is back, baby! The Magnificent Seven went into a tailspin as tariffs, war and the spectacle of the president’s coming close to firing the head of the Federal Reserve sent the world’s biggest stocks plunging. But they have pulled out of their dive, and despite Friday’s renewed trade tensions with Canada, both the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq made new highs on Friday. Boom!

The truth is more nuanced. Since the last high for the S&P 500, on Feb. 19, the best performer among big stocks has been the most humdrum of companies, a discount store. Look through the crash and rebound, and the Magnificent Seven should be the Sleepy Seven. Even the story within technology companies isn’t the same as it was.

The changes since the last S&P 500 high offer some important signals for investors.

To start with, the best-performing stock since the February high is the discount store Dollar General, up around 50%. It isn’t an outlier. Its rival Dollar Tree is the 13th-best performer in the S&P 500, up around 30%. They aren’t quite the opposite of AI, but they are the opposite of the growth story that investors are warming up to once again.

Next up are the Mag7 stocks, Alphabet, Amazon.com, Apple, Meta Platforms, Microsoft, Nvidia and Tesla. After leading the market up last year, they had a plunge for the ages after the February high. Four of them—Apple, Meta, Nvidia and Tesla—fell by 30% or more from the high, and only Microsoft dropped by less than the S&P excluding the Mag7. Sure, they have had a massive rebound, with Nvidia up 67% from its recent low. But as a group they have done exactly nothing since the last high.

The tech sector overall is up. But here, again, the story isn’t the same as before. Only one of the top 10 S&P tech stocks (out of 69) from the start of last year to the February peak made it into the top 10 since that peak—and that was Palantir Technologies, benefiting from a defense boom.

Big Tech isn’t dominating the market’s returns the way it used to, either. The industrials sector is the best-performing since the last high, in part thanks to defense stocks, with utilities only just behind tech. The consumer-discretionary sector, dominated by Tesla and Amazon, is still down, and communication services, dominated by Meta and Alphabet, is only just positive—and still behind the money you would have made in 10-year Treasurys.

Large stocks have beaten smaller stocks, with the Russell 2000 down 5% since mid-February. But unlike last year’s bull run, the very biggest haven’t been the winners. While the 50 biggest last year ran far ahead of the average S&P stock, since February there has been no divide by size within the index. In other words, large and medium-size stocks have done about the same, while smaller stocks have lagged behind.

The idea that growth stocks—embodied by the Mag7—are far ahead is also questionable. Several broad-value indexes have indeed lagged behind, but S&P’s 「pure」 value index, which takes only the 100 cheapest, was ahead of its pure-growth version until late in the past week, as some of the cheapest stocks in the market have done well. One example: Ford, which trades at nine times expected earnings over the next 12 months, is up more than 15%, while Tesla (140 times) is down 10%.

The indexes themselves are also odd. It is easy to think that the S&P is the 500 largest companies, and that the Nasdaq is a gauge of the top American tech stocks. At a time when tech is the dominant story, one might think that both would be led by the same stocks. They aren’t.

Only two of Nasdaq’s top 10 since the February high feature in the S&P’s top 10—Axon Enterprise, formerly Taser, and the tax software seller Intuit.

The best-performing Nasdaq-100 stock was Zscaler, which doesn’t qualify for the S&P because it doesn’t meet profit requirements.

MercadoLibre, Latin America’s biggest online shop, was sixth in the Nasdaq, but doesn’t make the cut for the S&P because it is based abroad.

Meanwhile, some of the best-performing S&P stocks since mid-February don’t qualify for the Nasdaq, either because they are listed on the NYSE, such as the turbine maker GE Vernova, or are financial stocks, including the recently surging crypto exchange Coinbase Global.

None of this makes for a very satisfactory market narrative, but that shouldn’t be surprising with so many plot twists under way. Stocks are pulled about by tariffs, dollar weakness, war and rapidly shifting government policies, as well as the usual single-stock issues.

The Big Tech boom might again become the only story driving the market, but for now it’s merely a rebound, and the new market highs are much more complicated. That’s a good thing: It makes for a healthier market when unloved stocks get a bit of attention too, rather than buying into the biggest based on a simple story that they are bound to keep going up.