AI Displacement Risk
S&P 500 business models on the wrong side of AI: seat-based IT services and outsourcing, ad agencies, and data/research vendors whose products LLMs increasingly substitute. A monitoring basket (potential underperformers / hedge candidates), not a buy list. Small by design — most pure displacement stories live outside the index.
Performance
Follow the theme against the wider market.
Series before each basket's creation date are a backtest of the membership as of creation; live tracking starts at creation.
| Return | 1 day | 5 days | 20 days | 60 days | MTD | YTD | 1 year |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Basket | -2.1% | -0.6% | +7.2% | +30.3% | -1.4% | +6.8% | +1.0% |
| vs FW 3000 | -1.7% | -0.8% | +7.7% | +22.6% | -2.0% | -5.8% | -15.2% |
Inside the basket · 12 stocks
Current members and the reasoning behind each inclusion. Returns are for individual stocks.
| Why it’s included | Added | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CNXC | Customer-experience outsourcing — seat-based BPO | -2.1% | +9.5% | +25.0% | -19.6% | 2026-06-11 |
| EPAM | IT services displacement — its own S&P 500 exit is the thesis playing out | -2.4% | +1.9% | +20.1% | -42.9% | 2026-06-11 |
| CDW | IT reseller/VAR: hardware-attach and services intermediation squeezed as spend shifts to hyperscalers | -1.0% | +3.2% | +12.7% | +13.6% | 2026-06-11 |
| MAN | Staffing — entry-level placement exposure | +0.8% | -0.7% | +9.5% | +113.3% | 2026-06-11 |
| CTSH | IT outsourcing: AI deflation of billable hours | -3.6% | -2.7% | +8.7% | -23.6% | 2026-06-11 |
| DXC | Legacy IT services and outsourcing | -0.1% | +4.0% | +7.6% | -20.4% | 2026-06-11 |
| ACN | Consulting both wins AI projects and cannibalizes seats — the contested case | -3.3% | -1.5% | +6.3% | -28.6% | 2026-06-11 |
| FDS | Financial data/research workflows exposed to LLM substitution | -3.5% | -1.9% | +6.1% | +5.9% | 2026-06-11 |
| RHI | White-collar staffing — hiring displaced by AI | -1.0% | -6.0% | +0.9% | +66.6% | 2026-06-11 |
| IT | Gartner: subscription research/advisory whose deliverables LLMs increasingly draft | -4.6% | -6.0% | +0.4% | -26.1% | 2026-06-11 |
| OMC | Creative ad production deflated by generative tools | -2.5% | -6.4% | -3.1% | +4.4% | 2026-06-11 |
| STGW | Ad agency network — creative volume deflation | -1.5% | +0.3% | -4.4% | +79.3% | 2026-06-11 |
Partial price histories: CNXC from 2020-11-24.
How this basket is built
Equal-weighted, monthly-rebalanced, buy-and-hold between rebalances; dated membership changes take effect same-day.
Tracked since 2026-06-11. Membership decisions are documented below.
Read the methodology →Reading the returns
Basket returns include dividends. “vs FW 3000” compares the basket’s compounded growth with the benchmark’s. Green means positive; red means negative.
Membership history & changes
- expand
EPAM re-enters as a broad-universe member: dropped from the S&P 500 basket when it left the index, but it remains an FW 3000 constituent and the purest displacement case in the theme. Effective-dated to creation like the other broad members.
- expand
FW 3000 pass: added CNXC, DXC, RHI, MAN, STGW — names outside the S&P 500 but inside our broad universe; they count only in the FW 3000 version of this basket. Effective-dated to creation so the broad backtest covers the full set. The S&P 500 basket is unchanged.
- drop
EPAM removed — dropped from the S&P 500 (caught by the constituent check on its first production run). An index exit by a displacement candidate is the thesis playing out, but basket rules require current constituents.
- expand
Widening pass: added IT and CDW. The S&P 500 holds few pure displacement candidates (staffing, ad-tech and outsourcing pure plays sit outside the index), so this basket stays deliberately small. No clean inverse-theme ETF exists to pin as a reference. New members are effective-dated to basket creation so the backtest and the reference correlation cover the widened set (the basket was one day old, with no meaningful live history to restate).
- create
Initial composition: 5 names. IPG excluded (Omnicom merger), MTCH excluded (index membership uncertain).