Tech turmoil

The lure of soaring returns in the tech sector was part of a "growth at all costs" mantra that has the planet riding for a fall.

- Peter Griffin

Warren Buffett, the wily 91-year-old multibillionaire and veteran of Wall Street, advises investors to be "fearful when others are greedy, and greedy when others are fearful".

Well, investors are in full fear mode at the moment. The markets have been slowly melting down. Rising interest rates, inflation, lingering supply-chain issues as China locks down to suppress Covid, and the ongoing nightmare in Ukraine have caused people and their asset managers to park their money somewhere safer.

The flight from risk has been particularly acute in the tech space, which had an incredible bull run stretching from the end of the global financial crisis of 2007-08 to the start of this year. In one three-day selling frenzy earlier this month, US$1 trillion was collectively wiped from Apple, Amazon, Alphabet, Nvidia, Meta, Microsoft and Tesla.