First and foremost, as a reminder to our existing and new clients, I personally write and publish these articles from time to time when I feel it is necessary to communicate my thoughts to you. These have generally come during times of market volatility but also have been delivered at all-time highs. While the monthly market commentary is delivered, I sometimes feel the need to expand upon that with additional thoughts. With that said, I hope you find these valuable.

Dating back to Fall of last year, many of the high-flying AI and/or software related companies have been experiencing volatility and price corrections. At the time I viewed it as a healthy consolidation (and in many ways still do) in this part of the market that had seen so much price appreciation in 2025 (and years before). While every price appreciation (and depreciation) comes with a thematic catalyst of why those moves are happening, money flowed out of these growth stocks and into lower growth, value-oriented names like consumer staples, utilities, healthcare, and commodities (especially precious metals). While these rotations internally are normal and often don’t show up at the index level, the most recent one has been to a higher magnitude and the stunning move in metals (especially silver) is not normal at all. Many reasons for these moves have been cited – namely debasement of the US Dollar given geopolitics and federal debt. The moves in gold made much more sense than silver. Silver caught a very speculative type of buying momentum, reminiscent of Reddit stocks like AMC, GameStop and cryptocurrencies. Since then, silver has endured a huge price correction and volatility associated with it – not exactly what metal investors sign up for when they seek to own these assets. This is a sign of today’s markets – driven by programs that quants, hedge funds, and high frequency traders make a living on. Those three terms can be used interchangeably as all three can be true simultaneously. In addition, we have the highest involvement of retail traders (at home) moving money around in stocks and ETFs. Money can flow in much larger quantities these days and faster than ever before. About 90% of daily volume is done by computers, not asset managers for an investor client base.

Valuations in these value-type sectors have climbed quite high relative to their historical averages. The recent catalyst for this rotation has been the concern that AI companies like Anthropic would essentially replace software providers like Salesforce. My thesis for these businesses remains steadfast – AI currently is and will continue to serve as a tool to enhance these software businesses widely used worldwide. In addition to this, companies like Oracle received massive orders to provide goods and services to companies building AI infrastructure. To fulfill these orders, investment was required to be made in the business, which temporarily eliminates the high margin and cash flow on the balance sheet and changes the financials from profitable to profitless. Personally, I am encouraged by these businesses making investments in themselves to growth their top and bottom lines instead of giving the money back to the investor in the form of a dividend or buyback. I want them growing and I’ll take the price corrections to get the long-term growth.

Along with this selloff was just about every other technology stock – it has been a sell first and ask questions later type of sentiment. This also is not abnormal. Ultimately, money wants to be where it has the best chance to grow and, historically, that has been technology and I do not see any reason why that should change. It’s where innovation is.

Now, we can add more geopolitical uncertainty to this large, complex equation. These types of events (namely the military campaign in Iran) do not provide for systematic or economic issues which could affect stocks in the longer term. What this does is add another road block in the ultimate recovery of technology stocks. What I am seeing currently at the time of this writing (Monday, 3/2/2026) is resilience to what should be a very bearish market on the Iran news and buying in some of the battered stocks against the grain of uncertain global sentiment. I see this as encouraging and something that I look for underneath the surface. The indexes like the Dow, Nasdaq, and SP500 don’t always tell the story of what’s happening in the markets. This may take several more weeks or even months to turn around, but ultimately, I see it as opportunity and not as a giant red flag that some analysts desperate for eyeballs and engagement are commenting.