As shown in the snapshot below from our Trend Analyzer tool, Technology has fallen 4.8% in the first week of the second half (5 trading days), ranking it as the worst performing sector so far this month.

Industrials (XLI) is down the second most at -2.6%, followed by Consumer Discretionary (XLY) at -1.7% and Materials (XLB) at -1.3%.  On the flip side, Consumer Staples (XLP), Communication Services (XLC), Health Care (XLV), Financials (XLF), and Energy (XLE) have all gained more than 1%, led by Energy (XLE) at +4.7%.

July’s action has been purely rotational thus far.  There were 22 stocks in the S&P 500 that more than doubled in the first half.  So far in July, these 22 stocks are down an average of 16.3%, with 20 of 22 in the red.  The remaining 478 stocks in the S&P are up an average of 0.9% this month.

As shown below, the six S&P 500 stocks that gained more than 250% in the first half are down at least 10% so far in July for an average drop of 18.3%!

There were 29 S&P 500 stocks that fell 20%+ in the first half, and as shown below, 26 of them are up so far in July for an average gain of 5.3%.  Only one of the 16 worst performing stocks in the first half is down so far in July, and that’s Lululemon (LULU) with a small drop of 0.5%.

The six stocks that were more than cut in half in the first half have all bounced at least 3% in the second half, with Accenture (ACN) up the most at 10.2%.

Given the huge performance divergences seen so far in July, it’s pretty clear that a lot of the move can be attributed to large investors and ETFs rebalancing their portfolios by selling winners and buying losers.  We wouldn’t read too much more into it.

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With a decline of more than 30%, Bitcoin (using the IBIT ETF as a proxy) was the worst performing asset class in the first half of 2026.

You’d be hard pressed to find a more depressing price chart than IBIT:

For awhile leading up to highs last year, Bitcoin was one of the most loved areas of the market for bulls to trade.  That sentiment has completely flipped with Bitcoin’s price doing nothing but declining for the last nine months.

Conventional market wisdom says to buy low and sell high, but price action does a funny thing to investor psychology.  When prices trend lower and lower, sentiment tends to worsen, and vice versa.  This is why sentiment is seen as a contrarian indicator.  When investors and traders are universally bullish on price after a big run higher, it’s usually a sign that all the good news is priced in.  When those same people are universally bearish after continuous declines, you’re often at or near a low point.

Bitcoin can still go a lot lower, and no one knows what the future holds.  But below is a look at where Bitcoin sentiment currently stands.

In our mid-year 2026 investor sentiment survey of Bespoke clients, we asked for their stance on Bitcoin going into the second half of 2026 and beyond.

While bullish sentiment towards stocks was above 60% in our mid-year survey, it was just 13% for Bitcoin!  12% were “moderately bullish,” while just 1% were “strongly bullish.”

At the end of 2025, Bitcoin bullish sentiment was at 35% (still pretty low), so it fell 22 percentage points in the first half of 2026.

On the flip side, neutral sentiment towards Bitcoin jumped from 40% at the end of 2025 up to 47%, while bearish sentiment rose from 25% to 40%.

While just 1% of survey-takers are “strongly bullish” on Bitcoin, 10% are “strongly bearish.”

Given these results, only a small percentage of market participants currently view Bitcoin positively, while a much larger number are very bearish.  And this is after Bitcoin has already been cut in half from its highs!

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Q3 has so far been the complete opposite of the trend in place in the first half of 2026.  Investors and traders have used the first handful of trading days this quarter as an opportunity to sell the year’s big winners and rotate into the year’s losers.

The Nasdaq 100 ETF (QQQ) has been volatile over the last month, with nothing to show for it.  Of the 20 trading days since 6/8, 16 have seen QQQ move up or down 1%+, yet its price is exactly flat over this period.

As shown below, QQQ is now at the bottom end of a flag pattern that forms from a series of lower highs and higher lows.  Technicians usually look for big moves whenever these flag patterns break.

The Philly SOX semis ETF (SOXX) rallied 111% from April lows through June 22nd.  It has since fallen 16% and is now just barely hanging onto its 50-DMA, a level it hasn’t closed below since early April.

Micron (MU) was one of the biggest winners in the semis space in Q2, rallying 277% from the end of March through June 25th.  MU has lost nearly a quarter of its value in a little over a week since that 6/25 peak:

Below is a snapshot of the biggest semis in the US run through our Trend Analyzer tool.  After trading in overbought or extreme overbought territory for much of Q2, they’re all back in neutral (or oversold) territory now.

Companies related to the data-center buildout have also been crushed over the last week as investors rotate away from AI infrastructure.

In addition to the semis and data-center stocks getting crushed, space-related stocks have also been experiencing gravity.  These names skyrocketed in May and June, but they’ve given up nearly all of those gains in a matter of weeks since SpaceX (SPCX) became available to equity-market investors.

As AI infrastructure and other first-half high fliers get sold, we’ve seen rotation into areas of the market that had been struggling.  Below are software and digital travel stocks that got slammed at various points in Q1 and Q2.  Most are up 5%+ over the last week.

Publicly-traded private equity stocks were down 20%+ across the board in the first half, but they’ve also seen a big bounce out of oversold territory since the start of the third quarter.  The PE stocks often move in tandem with software because of their huge exposure to the space.  If you think software will continue to rally over the coming months, you should probably be bullish on the alternative asset managers as well.

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