The Great Rotation Out of Tech — Season 9, Episode 47

CNBC this week: "The much-hyped great rotation out of tech for 2026 may be over already." Six weeks. That is how long this one lasted before the obituary got written.

If you have been trading this bull market since the October 2022 low, you have seen this movie roughly twice a year. Same script, different macro villain, same ending. At some point, it stops being a coincidence and becomes a business model — for media, for strategists, for tech haters and value investors, anyone who needs something new to say every Monday morning.

Nine consolidations, nine rotation calls

February 2023 — SVB. Regional banking crisis, credit crunch fears. Tech sold off into the panic. Narrative: "Duration assets get hit first when liquidity breaks." Resolution: Nvidia's May guidance beat, triggering +53% in a day. Semis went vertical for the rest of the year.

August–October 2023 — The rate scare. 10-year yield ran from 3.8% to 5.0%. QQQ down 12%. Every strategist on television: "Higher for longer kills tech multiples, rotate into value." Resolution: Powell pivot in December. NDX +25% in ten weeks.

April 2024 — Sticky CPI. Hot inflation print blew up rate-cut hopes. Nasdaq −7% inside a week. Narrative: "No landing, multiples have to compress." Six weeks later: new all-time highs.

July–August 2024 — The yen carry unwind. IWM +11% in a single week, Mag-7 −15%. Every macro desk called the regime change. "Breadth is broadening. The mega-cap era is over. Equal-weight finally wins." Small caps rolled over within four weeks. Nasdaq made new highs through December.

September 2024 — AI capex bubble, wave one. Goldman's "Too Much Spend, Too Little Benefit" paper went viral. Narrative: "Hyperscaler capex has no ROI, semis crack." Hyperscalers raised capex guidance the next quarter. SMH made new highs.

January 2025 — DeepSeek. NVIDIA −17% in a single session on R1's release — roughly 600 billion in market cap gone in an afternoon. "Compute thesis is dead. Efficiency kills infrastructure demand." Jevons paradox played out in two weeks. Back to all-time highs by spring.

March–April 2025 — Liberation Day. Tariff shock, broad de-risking. "Supply chains unwind, semis are uninvestable." Exemptions came. A pause came. Full recovery in weeks.

Summer 2025 — AI capex bubble, wave two. Stronger hyperscaler reports, and yet: "Circular financing, OpenAI deals aren't real, this whole thing is a Ponzi." Guidance kept climbing.

Q1 2026 — the current one. Energy leads. Staples hold. Russell 2000 up 9.5% in three weeks. Every strategist note: "The equal-weight trade was right all along." Six weeks later, the CNBC obituary you just read.

Nine windows. Nine rotation narratives. Same ending every time.