By Jeff Powell, CEO
Elevage Partners | March 16, 2026
A client called me at the end of last week: “Jeff, I understand the geopolitics. But my tech holdings are down for the third week in a row. Should we be doing something?” She is not alone. I have had some version of this conversation several times in recent days.
For months, the pattern was AI-specific: technology stocks up sharply on a model announcement or a data center deal one day, down just as sharply on a competitive headline the next.
This week the driver of market moves is different: oil pushing above $100, renewed uncertainty around inflation, and a geopolitical conflict that has equity markets on edge. The cause has changed. The question clients ask in moments like this has not.
The thesis was never “AI stocks go up every day”
When we built our positioning around AI and technology infrastructure, we weren’t making a prediction about what any given stock would do next Tuesday. We were making a judgment about where durable economic value is being created over the next five to 10 years.
That thesis has two parts that I think get separated in the noise.
The first part is the obvious one: the technology platforms themselves. These are businesses with real pricing power, real competitive moats, and real earnings. They are not speculation. But they get caught in the market whipsaw because they carry the “AI” label, and because in a risk-off environment, higher-multiple growth stocks tend to face more pressure than the broader market.
The second part is what many investors are missing entirely: the infrastructure that makes AI possible. The energy. The utilities. Data centers need power, enormous amounts of it, and that buildout is happening right now, at scale, regardless of which AI model wins the competition. The energy and utility companies we hold alongside the software platforms are beneficiaries of this shift in ways that do not show up in AI headlines. They show up in demand for electricity and infrastructure capital. This week, with oil above $100, that positioning is being validated from an additional direction. The thesis was always about durable demand for energy. The current environment is making that case more visible.
The volatility is almost entirely in the first part. The second part is not quiet this week.
What the Noise Is Actually Telling You
When you see technology stocks under pressure for three consecutive weeks, what you’re watching is the market working through two things at once: who captures the most value as AI matures, and how growth stocks reprice when inflation expectations shift. That is a lot to absorb simultaneously. In our assessment, what you are watching is uncertainty being priced, not a thesis being broken. The underlying question is still being answered. That uncertainty is real. We do not have a perfect answer either.
What we do have is a framework for thinking about it. We hold companies with strong balance sheets, durable competitive positions, and consistent earnings power. We pay close attention to valuation. When a stock gets priced for perfection, we notice. And we hold the infrastructure layer precisely because it’s less exposed to the “who wins AI” question and more exposed to the “AI requires power” reality, which, in our assessment, is unlikely to reverse.
The Part that Actually Hurts Clients
I’ve been in this business for over 30 years, and I’ve watched the same pattern repeat itself in every major technology transition: the internet, mobile, cloud. The people who got hurt weren’t the ones who held through the volatility. They were the ones who made permanent decisions based on temporary noise.
Selling a position on a bad week and going to cash feels prudent. In our experience, it rarely is. The question is never “is the news good today?” The question is “is the thesis still intact?” And right now, our assessment is that it is.
The companies we hold in this part of the portfolio are generating real earnings. In our assessment, the energy buildout for AI data centers is accelerating, not slowing. The competitive dynamics are real and will create winners and losers, and that’s why we hold a basket of positions across the theme rather than a single bet.
This is what “Investing for Your WHY®” actually means in practice. Your portfolio isn’t built around hoping AI stocks go up every day. It’s built around your specific goals: retirement, legacy, financial security. Daily volatility doesn’t change those goals. When your plan is anchored to purpose rather than performance, these headline swings can become background noise rather than panic triggers.
What We’re Doing
On the technology platform side, we are holding our positions. The businesses are intact and the thesis has not changed. A stock going down in a market selloff is different from a business that has something wrong with it. In our assessment, these businesses do not have something wrong with them. On the energy and infrastructure side, those holdings have moved significantly and we are reviewing valuations carefully before drawing any conclusions. Momentum does not override our pricing discipline. We are not chasing the headlines in either direction.
If something changes that alters the underlying thesis, such as a meaningful shift in capital allocation away from AI infrastructure or a sustained change in earnings trajectory for our core holdings, we will act. Oil prices creating a risk-off rotation in growth stocks is not that.
If three weeks of market pressure is creating anxiety, or you are wondering whether your portfolio needs adjusting, the conversation worth having is not about markets in general. It is about your specific plan and whether any of this actually changes what you are trying to accomplish. Email us at info @ elevagepartners.com to set up a portfolio check-in.