Tech stocks slump, the "silver economy" reaps huge windfalls.

Yesterday, the capital market performance of "old blue-chip stocks" such as baijiu and banking sectors continued to rise. Many people no longer talk about the "tech bull market".

The current market is undergoing style shift. On one side, the belief in "the sea of stars" is wavering, while on the other side, the value of "daily necessities" is returning. Throughout July, the divergence between technology and consumption, growth and value continued to deepen. The market seems to tell us that the story-telling phase has come to a temporary end, and it is time to focus on performance.

Style Shift

"In 2023, if I had gone all-in and full margin on the four major state-owned banks, then gone out to play for three or four years, I would have earned 300% when I came back."

A senior investor said with regret, recalling the judgment that failed to be put into practice.

At that time, he thought a bull market was coming and wanted to buy companies with higher flexibility, so he gave up investing in the four major banks. Looking back now, he said it was "greed that got the better of him".

Yesterday, sectors including baijiu and banking continued to rise. For the whole of July, the CSI Baijiu Index rose by 14.3%, erasing the decline in June. The CSI Bank Index rose by 13.3% in July, almost filling the gap in the first half of the year.

Compared with old blue-chip stocks, tech stocks extended their multi-day downtrend and continued to fall. Only yesterday, the semiconductor, component, communication, and storage sectors fell by 7%, 6.6%, 5.3%, and 6.6% respectively.

Some investors suggest that if retail investors do not want to take sides in the market game, dividend stocks are worthy of research.

In fact, the ebb and flow between tech and traditional "old economy" in this round is believed to be rooted in their completely different industrial cycles.

The AI computing power industrial chain started in 2023, and large tech companies artificially boosted the prosperity of the semiconductor industry through capital expenditure. But three years on, the current semiconductor industry inventory cycle has shifted from active restocking to passive destocking, and the capital expenditure growth rate of US cloud vendors has also been lowered from 40-50% per year to 20-30%.

The newly released Microsoft financial report also predicts that capital expenditure in 2027 will reach 175 billion US dollars, 15 billion US dollars less than the previous market estimate of 190 billion US dollars, which has sent an important signal that large tech companies are reducing AI investment. As a result, Microsoft's share price did not fall, but surged 15.51% overnight, showing that the market welcomes Microsoft's move. But for tech valuations, this is not entirely good news.

In contrast, baijiu and banking sectors are believed to be in different cycle positions.

It goes without saying that baijiu is a cash flow machine that can traverse cycles. For the banking sector, the core variable that suppressed bank stocks in the past two years is the continuous narrowing of net interest margins.

However, with multiple rounds of deposit rate cuts, the downward space for interest margins has been relatively limited. Coupled with the dividend yield of more than 5% of large state-owned banks, which forms a solid safety cushion, all these constitute the basis for the style shift of market funds.

The Tech Rally Did Not Boost Consumption

In this round of AI bull market, many people initially speculated that this might be a full-scale bull market. The two legs of economic operation — technology and consumption — could both enter an upward range.

But the conclusion is now clear: this is a structural bull market, and technology and consumption present a lopsided pattern of "zero-sum game".

A June report from China International Capital Corporation pointed out that the global market in 2026 is moving towards extreme differentiation, with the core main line being AI technology, and sectors not on this track, such as A-share consumption and Hong Kong stocks, are mostly significantly underperforming. The essence of this structural market is a microcosm of the K-shaped differentiation of the credit cycles between China and the US, that is, strong technology while weak domestic demand.

There are multiple reasons for this phenomenon.

The two sectors form a mutual fund competition effect. JPMorgan Chase believes that in this bull market, the large consumption sector has become the source of funds for increasing positions in AI and robotics themes, rather than an active holding target.

In plain terms, in the stock market, the money used to buy tech stocks is drawn from the money originally allocated to consumption. Unless there is a large amount of incremental funds entering the market, the seesaw effect between technology and consumption will not be broken.

The dividends of technology have not benefited too many ordinary people. There is a saying that "the wealth radiation radius of the AI industrial chain is extremely narrow".

Most core AI companies, whether in optical modules, PCBs, or server OEMs, belong to the manufacturing industry with a limited number of employed people, and their revenue is driven by capital expenditure. The incremental wealth they generate is concentrated in a small number of shareholders and technical talents, which is difficult to form inclusive improvement of residents' income, leaving consumption lacking fundamental impetus.

This macro market trend can be reflected in many aspects of ordinary people's daily lives.

The first-half 2026 economic data released by the National Bureau of Statistics on July 15 shows that the per capita disposable income of residents increased by 5.2% year-on-year, while the per capita consumption expenditure only increased by 3.7%, "People are more willing to save money than spend it."

In terms of large-ticket consumption, automobiles are often regarded as a reflection of consumer confidence. But passenger vehicle sales in June fell by 23.2% year-on-year, and the industry's full-year sales are expected to drop by 14%, indicating that consumer confidence is not strong. Meanwhile, in the first half of 2026, the total retail sales of consumer goods nationwide only grew by 1.3%, which is also lower than the GDP growth rate.

On the contrary, in the face of future uncertainty, people's expenditure on travel, performances and sports events is increasing, showing that people's desire to seek emotional value and comfort is growing. Pop Mart's strong rally in the past six months is a clear proof of this.

So when can tech stocks and consumption move in the same direction? UBS Securities believes that the relay of the consumption sector requires improvement in residents' income and balance sheet repair.

Qu Hongbin, former Chief Economist for Greater China at HSBC, pointed out in his article "Consumption and Technology — Not 'Who Dominates Who', But 'Coexistence and Co-prosperity'" published this year that technological innovation divorced from consumer demand is like an arrow without a target. Only when consumer demand rises can a virtuous cycle of innovation-monetization-re-innovation be formed.

"Old Economy" Is a Stigmatization of High-Quality Companies

The US tech capital market rose on Thursday. Microsoft's share price closed up nearly 16%, marking its largest single-day gain since October 2008. Driven by the US stock market, the South Korean stock market rebounded strongly in the morning of July 31. The Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI) once rose by more than 15% during the session, hitting its largest intraday gain in history.

At the opening this morning, the three major domestic indices opened higher collectively, with sectors including semiconductors and chips, computing power hardware, and robotics leading the gains.

However, some market observers believe that overall, looking back at the whole of July, only the STAR 50 Index rebounded sharply, but its peak is getting lower and lower. This should be a sign that the mid-term rally is over, rather than a correction, and caution is still needed in the market outlook.

Some senior investors have allocated funds to low-volatility dividend assets in advance. For example, investment blogger "Zhitongpian" has reallocated his funds to leading traditional industry companies with low valuations and high dividend yields.

He believes that calling these leading companies "old" is a kind of stigmatization through communication. Investment itself should focus on the earnings quality, free cash flow generation capacity, and sustainable dividend returns of these enterprises. These are the measures of the intrinsic value of enterprises, rather than echoing popular buzzwords.

This criticism makes sense. In general, the investment value of an enterprise does not lie in whether it is new or old, but depends on the calculation of enterprise value — Enterprise Value = Free Cash Flow / (Discount Rate - Growth Rate).

When macro uncertainty rises and risk premiums move higher, tech stocks that rely on long-term growth will be suppressed, while traditional leading companies with immediate visible cash flow will be revalued.

Therefore, the revaluation of "old" enterprises is nothing more than the market's re-pricing of certainty premium at a specific stage. Rather than saying they are old, it is better to say they are stable. This kind of stability is probably the scarcest asset attribute in the current macro environment.

This article is from the WeChat Official Account "Muhe Business and Finance", author: Gong Zheng, editor: Yang Jing, published with authorization from 36Kr.