Tech stocks rallied in the first half of 2026. Then they sold off in June. Then someone looked at the scoreboard and noticed the American ones got their asses kicked by foreign tech companies.
The biggest winners weren't in the U.S. They were international. Which means retail traders who spent six months screaming about Nvidia and Microsoft on Reddit just watched a bunch of Taiwanese and Korean semiconductor companies lap them like they were standing still.
Big Tech had strong gains. Just not strong enough. It's like finishing second place in a race you thought you were dominating because you only looked at your own feet the entire time.
The sharp sell-off at the end of June wiped out God knows how much of those gains. Probably the exact amount someone needed to break even for the year. That's always how it works. The market has a radar for your specific cost basis and it fires a missile directly at it.
International counterparts outperformed. That's the headline. American tech stocks got outperformed by stocks most people can't even pronounce. TSMC. ASML. Samsung. These companies make the chips that go inside the American companies everyone actually buys. But sure, keep betting on the middleman.
Chart guys spent the first half drawing lines on Magnificent Seven stocks while the real money was getting made in countries they couldn't find on a map. Technical analysis works great until you realize you were analyzing the wrong f*cking chart.
June's sell-off hit right at the end of the reporting period. Perfect timing. Just late enough to ruin the headline but not late enough to blame it on Q3. That's efficiency.
Every American tech bro who thought they were early to AI just got outperformed by someone who bought the boring infrastructure plays they ignored because they didn't have a chatbot feature.
Photo by Martin Sanchez on Unsplash
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