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Tech cools off as money hides in boring, defensive corners
As of Apr 23, 2026, 4:00 PM ET
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For informational purposes only.
If you’re heavy in tech or AI, today probably felt like, “Why is everything I own down when the market barely moved?” This was one of those days where the headlines looked calm, but under the surface money quietly shuffled from the hot stuff into the boring, defensive stuff.
The big story was a reset after a huge run.
The economy is still coming in stronger than expected: today’s purchasing manager surveys showed both factories and services comfortably in “growth” territory, and weekly jobless claims stayed low at 214,000. That’s good news for Main Street, but it keeps the “inflation is heating back up” narrative alive.
Bond yields inched higher across most maturities, and volatility stayed moderate with the VIX around 19. Put simply: investors are nudging prices to reflect the idea that interest rates may stay high while inflation and energy shocks (tied to the Iran/Strait of Hormuz situation) linger.
When that happens, the market tends to ask, “What am I overpaying for?” The answer today was: growthy, high‑beta tech.
The major indexes were down, but not dramatically:
Underneath that, the damage was broader: only about 37% of stocks rose, and an equal‑weighted basket of the S&P fell roughly −1.3%. So this was a “more red than the index suggests” kind of day.
Leadership flipped hard:
You could see the split even inside chips: Texas Instruments, a more old‑school/analog chip name, jumped nearly 20%, while big tech favorites like Microsoft, Tesla, and Palantir took mid‑single‑digit hits.
Despite the red in tech, this did not look like outright panic. Volatility is still in a “normal” zone, and just over half of stocks remain above their long‑term (200‑day) trend lines. The regime signals are basically saying: equity risk is neutral, volatility is stable, and the pullback is more rotation than breakdown.
For a portfolio, that means the pain is concentrated in what had been working best—big tech, AI, and other high‑octane names—while value and defensives are quietly holding things up.
Two or three things matter from here:
If you remember nothing else from today: the market didn’t break; it just reminded everyone that what races up—especially in tech—doesn’t move in a straight line forever.
