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- US defensive stocks are more hated than ever
US defensive stocks are more hated than ever
Investors have rarely been this complacent
Global Markets Investor
May 07, 2026
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GLOBAL MARKETS INVESTOR’S PORTFOLIO IS 🔥UP +100%🔥SINCE JANUARY 2024
DURING THE MARCH-APRIL 2025 MARKET TURMOIL, MAJOR US INDEXES FELL NEARLY 20%, WHILE THE GMI PORTFOLIO GAINED OVER 5%, FIND OUT HOW BELOW:
Consumer staples, healthcare, and utilities now reflect just ~15% of the S&P 500 market cap, the lowest on record, per Augur Infinity.
This weighting has dropped -12 percentage points since the 2022 bear market, as investors have aggressively rotated into technology and AI-related stocks at the expense of traditionally defensive sectors.
The share is even lower than at the 2000 Dot-Com Bubble peak.
Headline: Your marketing stack reports to one place now.
Your media buyer opens Slack at 8am. There's already a cross-platform brief in #growth: Google Ads spend vs. ROAS, Meta CPA by campaign, Stripe revenue by channel. Viktor posted it at 6am. Nobody asked for it.
Same colleague caught a spend spike overnight on your brand campaign. Flagged it before anyone logged in. The problem was handled before the first standup.
Your strategist reviews trends. Your account manager checks attribution. Same Slack channel. Same colleague. Before anyone's first coffee.
Google Ads, Meta, Stripe. One message. No Looker. No Data Studio. No dashboard tab left open since Tuesday.
11,000+ teams use Viktor daily. SOC 2 certified. Your data never trains models.
Healthcare weight alone is now down to 8.3%, its lowest level since 1994.
This all suggests the current market may be significantly underpricing the need for portfolio protection.
Meanwhile, investors are piling into tech at the most aggressive pace in years:
The Nasdaq 100 ETF, $QQQ ( ▼ 0.23% ) , attracted +$4.68 billion in inflows on Monday, the largest single-day inflow in 5 years.
This is only below the 2021 meme stock mania.
This brings the 21-day total to +$10 billion, the highest since October 2025 and the 3rd-largest 21-day inflow ever.
Furthermore, in April, the 3x Leveraged Semiconductor Bear ETF, $SOXS ( ▲ 9.89% ) , attracted +$2.4 billion in inflows, its largest monthly intake on record.
This was despite the fund dropping -66.6%, its worst monthly performance ever, as the Semiconductor Index, $SOX ( 0.0% ) , surged +38%.
At the same time, investors pulled more than -$9.1 billion from the 3x Leveraged Semiconductor Bull ETF, $SOXL ( ▼ 10.18% ) , its largest monthly outflow EVER.
This was even as this fund surged +165%, its best monthly performance on record.
Both of these flows were dominated by retail investors, with participation in $SOXS and $SOXL reaching levels seen less than 3% and 1% of the time, respectively, over the last 5 years.
This all comes at a time when the semiconductor sector has almost never been this overbought.
$SOX, is currently trading +56% above its 200-day moving average, a level only exceeded once in history, during the peak of the March 2000 Dot-com Bubble at +110%.
Additionally, $SOX weekly RSI is at its highest since March 2000.
Moreover, over the last 12 months, the semiconductor ETF, $SMH ( ▼ 1.78% ) , has surged +152.6%, a gain so extreme it sits 4 standard deviations above the long-run average, meaning this has occurred less than 0.01% of the time historically.
Another stock frenzy driven by retail investors has arrived.
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