One of the common transitions that bull markets go through as they age and die is a narrowing of leadership. As formerly strong sectors begin to stall out, investors shift into whatever is still looking good — that is, whatever still has upward momentum. Eventually capital becomes concentrated in just a few names. Then those stocks roll over and the game ends.

This time around Big Tech was the final category of momentum play, and it ended up attracting astounding amounts of money from both the usual suspects like hedge funds and some new suckers like the Central Bank of Switzerland, now a major holder of Apple shares.

But now Big Tech has lost the Big Mo:

 

Amazon, for instance, tripled in 2015, and has now given back about half of that move. Google hit an all-time high very recently and is now falling like a stone. But today’s big story is LinkedIn, which is, as this is written, down 40% on disappointing forward guidance.

Here’s a piece from an analyst who offers a strategy for playing this sudden reversal of fortune: