Treasuries didn’t provide much comfort either. When the conflict began, the 10-year Treasury yield was near 3.96%. As the conflict progressed, yields had climbed to roughly 4.44%. Instead of attracting aggressive flight-to-safety buying, Treasuries sold off. The move appeared to reflect two overlapping concerns: first, the inflationary implications of higher oil prices and, second, the growing belief that a prolonged geopolitical conflict would require substantial additional Treasury issuance. Wars are expensive. Investors are often hesitant to crowd into an asset class where supply could rise dramatically at the exact moment inflation risks seem to be increasing.

Then there’s gold. For centuries, gold has been the default hedge against global instability. However, during this episode, gold struggled as well. The reason likely has less to do with gold itself and more to do with the unique nature of this shock combined with central bank behavior over the last several years. From 2022 through 2025, central banks accumulated gold at the fastest pace in roughly 80 years. Part of that movement reflected a broader, if somewhat limited, push toward de-dollarization. The theory was that  if the U.S. was becoming a less predictable steward of global trade and finance, perhaps holding more non-dollar reserves made sense.

However, as the Iranian conflict persisted without resolution, some of those same countries suddenly found themselves needing dollars. Oil still trades globally in dollars, and defending weakening local currencies against a surging dollar also requires dollar liquidity. In effect, some central banks appeared forced to liquidate portions of their recently accumulated gold to meet those needs, removing a critical buyer group at exactly the moment the metal needed support most.

If three of the four traditional safe havens were failing to attract capital, something else had to absorb those flows. Big tech did. 

What was once viewed as the market’s ultimate risk trade suddenly started looking like the closest thing to a modern safe haven. With fortress balance sheets, massive recurring cash flow, minimal direct commodity exposure and enormous pricing power, the case isn’t hard to construct in hindsight. Microsoft and Nvidia probably don’t experience meaningful margin compression even with crude near $100. In fact, many of the semiconductor names became leadership stocks during the rebound, with AI infrastructure demand continuing to accelerate despite the economic headwinds that would normally accompany elevated energy prices. AMD, Micron and even Intel all participated meaningfully in the move.

The rally in tech also received additional validation from an exceptionally strong start to earnings season, particularly from Alphabet. The company reported on April 29, showing accelerating cloud growth, improving margins and stronger-than-expected AI monetization trends. Importantly, this came at a moment when the market had spent the better part of a year questioning whether the AI investment cycle would ever generate real returns. 

Money always has to go somewhere. In this environment, the only assets consistently attracting capital are oil and big tech. And oil, with its direct exposure to ongoing geopolitical uncertainty, can be viewed as too volatile for many market participants. Big tech, by contrast, has started looking like the most defensive choice.

In years past, one of the clearest ways to hedge risk or express a view on large-cap tech was through CME Group’s E-mini and Micro E-mini Nasdaq-100 futures. The top ten market cap stocks in the Nasdaq currently comprise nearly 60% of the index’s total weighting. This concentration makes traditional CME Group Nasdaq futures contracts a reasonably effective hedge for large tech exposure. The E-mini Nasdaq contract carries a notional value of roughly 20 times the index, or approximately $500,000. The Micro contract is one tenth the size, with notional exposure closer to $50,000. 

But something new is now on the horizon that could materially alter the equation.

CME Group has announced the upcoming launch of Single Stock futures (SSFs) this summer, with an initial lineup focused on the top U.S. mega-cap names, many of which are tech. Consider what that means in practice. Alphabet reported earnings on April 29 with a sharply higher reaction, but it could just as easily have moved the other direction. If an investor held a large long-term position in GOOGL and wanted to maintain that exposure through earnings, they could theoretically sell SSFs against the position as a hedge.

That creates several meaningful advantages.

First, investors would be able to hedge without relying only on options, avoiding the rapid theta decay that typically occurs immediately after earnings announcements. Second, while the exact margin structure hasn’t yet been announced, it’s reasonable to expect the capital efficiency typical of traditional CME Group futures products. Third, if these contracts develop the liquidity profile of existing CME Group index futures, they could trade nearly around the clock, a significant feature given that most major tech companies report after the closing bell, precisely when hedging needs are highest.

Most importantly, SSFs could provide investors with a way to reduce short-term downside risk in long-held positions without being forced to sell stock outright and potentially trigger capital gains consequences. If these contracts gain meaningful adoption, they could become one of the more important structural developments in tech trading in years, arriving at exactly the moment when big tech itself has taken on a role no one expected it to fill.