Amazon was a long-term winner but its stock fell about 90% in the dot-com crash, and buying at the peak in 1999 meant waiting until 2009 to break even.

Then, in late June, the index providers did their annual rebalance. They moved those chip stocks out of the value index and into the growth index and moved Amazon, Apple, and Microsoft the other way into value.

And the timing was, by complete accident, absolutely perfect. The chips got sold right at the top of their run, just before they rolled over, and the value index picked up the big tech names right as they were touching their lows.

The only small catch is where it left you. Your sensible value portfolio is now stuffed with Amazon, Apple, and Microsoft, three of the biggest tech companies on Earth, and quite possibly the exact stocks you bought a value fund to avoid owning.

You escaped the AI trade and landed in what was effectively the AI trade wearing a false mustache.

Amazon is the obvious example of a winner that you could have picked. Amazon survived the crash and became one of the most valuable companies in human history, but its stock still fell about 90% when the bubble burst.

If you bought at the peak in 1999, you were absolutely right about the future of online commerce, and you then would have had to wait until 2009 to get back to break even on your investment.

Being right cost you a decade. Jeff Bezos' own letter to shareholders about that year opened with a single word, "Ouch." It's worth noting that there are very few people who would have bought just Amazon, either.

In the typical tech investor's portfolio in 1999, along with Amazon, was a basket of stocks like pets.com that all went to zero, diluting their long-term returns significantly.