The tech winners and losers of the pandemic

In the early days of covid-19, the tech industry was consumed by a sense of euphoria. With billions of people locked down at home, work and play were shifting online. Many hoped that the new normal would spark a huge productivity boom as firms digitised and workers spent less time commuting. The excitement was most evident in stockmarkets, where any firm related to this trend saw its share price surge. The value of an equally weighted portfolio of five pandemic darlings—call it the “lockdown lunacy index”—increased by 320% from the start of the pandemic to its peak in August 2021. The tech-heavy nasdaq, by contrast, rose by 88%.