Wall Street dumped nearly $1 trillion in tech stocks by midday—then clawed it back and bought peanut butter and paint

Today, the Nasdaq Composite looked like a V: down more than 4% by lunchtime, closing off just 1%. 

Nobody knows exactly why.

Around noon, the AI jitters came back, and traders dumped the highest-beta names—the frothiest, most volatile stuff—like Strategy (MSTR), the leveraged Bitcoin vehicle that had popped Monday; AppLovin (APP); and photonics maker Lumentum (LITE). 

But the densest cluster was the chipmakers: Marvell, which dropped 10% in a day after jumping 10% on news it’s joining the S&P 500, and the rest of what strategist Ben Emons has dubbed the “Parabolic 7,” after a chip index that ran up nearly 100% in a matter of weeks. 

Rather than fleeing equities altogether—Treasuries barely moved—the market rotated into peanut butter and paint:........

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