Why Tech Isn’t Synonymous With Growth Anymore: Everything Risk

Attendees at the 2023 CES event in Las Vegas, Nevada, US, on Friday, Jan. 6, 2023. For the first time, CES has a theme: how technology is addressing the world's biggest challenges.Photographer: Bridget Bennett/Bloomberg

Technology stocks probably won’t lead the next bull market. Not only is the great post-Internet digitization wave near complete, lots of so-called tech stocks aren’t really in the tech business. As a slowdown in 2023 takes form, a sorting out in the technology space that already began last year should gather pace.

If I told you a company was growing revenue by 30% a year and half of its incremental revenue falls to the bottom line because its business was “scalable,” wouldn’t you be excited to invest? In the post-2008 world, many were. With markets haunted first by the specter of so-called secular stagnation and then upended by the pandemic, companies that sold narratives like that were the leaders.