2026년 2월 7일 · Unknown · financial · 출처 Yahoo Finance
Photographer: Michael Nagle/Bloomberg
(Bloomberg) -- Precious metals memed out, Bitcoin flamed out and the labor market looks like it’s petering out. None of it started in the equities market, but together it was enough — along with a reckoning for software firms — to shake the foundation of an AI-driven bull run.
Friday’s rally pushed the S&P 500 back to breakeven for the week. Still, such rallies in the aftermath of broad-based selling tend to occur in times of prolonged stress. And a closer look at the equity landscape shows cracks still exist, prompting investors to pay up for protection against further downside.
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“When investors get nervous, it’s often the most stretched areas of the global financial markets that feel the pain first,” said Mike Dickson, head of research and quantitative strategies at Horizon Investments.
The tumult that earlier in the week wiped out more than $1.5 trillion in value from US equities left investors questioning some underlying assumptions. Is the economy really strong enough to support another year of double-digit gains? Will AI’s promise of productivity gains instead wreak havoc on entire industries? Are retail traders distorting markets, turning havens into hazards?
The uncertainty sent software stocks on the wildest ride, but they were hardly alone. Momentum stocks, mostly big tech, suffered the worst one-day rout since the pandemic. Miners went for a violent spin with gold, silver and copper prices tracing charts reminiscent of the meme-stock frenzy. And companies that popped up to plug into the Bitcoin craze got iced by the latest crypto winter. Even consumer stocks, relative winners in recent months, got hammered.
“There are a lot of pot holes out there that are turning into sink holes for some assets and sectors,” said Thomas Thornton, founder of Hedge Fund Telemetry LLC.
Here are the sectors, stocks and themes beyond the software selloff that still look vulnerable after the past week’s downs-and-ups.Photographer: Michael Nagle/Bloomberg
SMALL CAPS
The year started with investors rotating from tech, where valuations had become stretched, into companies that benefit from an upswing in economic growth and falling interest rates. Chief among their targets: small caps.
That bet soured in the past week, partly because investors left few corners of the market unscathed. The main problem, though, came from a trio of labor-market data points that showed worrisome weakness in the American economy. Small caps get a disproportionately high percentage of sales at home.
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The threat to employment from AI also weighed on the sector, with small financial and tech companies most vulnerable to disruption. Suddenly, the Russell 2000’s 7.6% advance to start the year looks too optimistic.
“The equity market could be sniffing out mounting pressure on consumers, as labor market data continues to cool,” said Cameron Dawson, chief investment officer at NewEdge Wealth.
A surprisingly strong consumer sentiment reading on Friday stemmed the selling, but not before the Russell 2000 fell more than 5% from its most recent peak.
MEME-LIKE METALS
The moves in the price of gold and silver, up and down, have been anything but normal. Naturally, the companies that mine them have been along for the ride.
Newmont Corp., the largest gold miner in the US, doubled in 2025, while some smaller miners like Discovery Silver Corp. soared 1,000%. The trade is unwinding rapidly. The VanEck Gold Miners ETF dropped 13% on Jan. 29, the most in over five years. Despite rebounding sharply thanks to gains Friday, the fund and the space are suffering from what Horizon’s Dickson called a lack of “strong fundamental support.”
The metals have “transformed from boring commodities traded by professionals into exciting gambling instruments traded by retail investors,” Owen Lamont, senior vice-president and portfolio manager at Acadian Asset Management LLC, wrote. “Forget meme stocks, we’ve entered the age of meme metals.”
That’s alarming for investors trying to play gold miners as a port in turbulent times. Double-digit daily and weekly moves simply don’t comport with a risk-averse profile.
The trade has gotten “nutty,” said Sameer Samana, head of global equities and real assets at the Wells Fargo Investment Institute. “Almost every theme has been taken to the nth degree and gold and silver are not an exception.”
Canada’s benchmark equity index is loaded up with metals miners and has dropped more sharply than its US counterpart in the past week. The S&P/TSX Composite Index has a 14% weighting to gold miners — a percentage that might increase after a planned rebalancing that could add up to nine gold companies, owing to their strong performance in 2025, Scotiabank analyst Jean-Michel Gauthier wrote Thursday.
DATs
Digital gold fared even worse than the metal, effectively rendering obsolete the moniker given to Bitcoin by its legions of fans. In the stock market, Bitcoin miners and so-called digital asset treasury companies — most notably Strategy Inc. — took it on the chin.
Strategy plunged 9.9% this week as Bitcoin tumbled past $65,000 to the lowest in more than 15 months. Its holdings have an average cost basis north of $75,000. Other copycat DATs, like Metaplanet Inc., MARA Holdings and DeFi Technologies, also fell.
Companies that allow investors to trade crypto also got rocked. Galaxy Digital Inc. and Coinbase Global Inc. all fell more than 20% this week. The largest ETF that tracks Bitcoin sank 16%.
ECM TROUBLE
As software firms like Docusign Inc., Salesforce Inc. and Workday Inc. plunged on concern AI tools could obviate their businesses, investors started scouring other parts of th…