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.
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 | -0.2% | +7.7% | +10.4% | +36.0% | +15.0% | -7.8% | +2.9% |
| vs S&P 500 | +0.9% | +9.7% | +10.3% | +31.1% | +14.7% | -17.9% | -10.8% |
1y · 2025-10-16 – 2026-10-16 · 252 / 252 sessions
Basket total returns · Annualized using 252 trading sessions · 0% risk-free rate and downside target. As of 2026-10-16 · close.
Sharpe: average daily simple return divided by its sample standard deviation, multiplied by √252. The risk-free rate is assumed to be 0%; this is not a cash-adjusted ratio.
Sortino: average daily simple return divided by downside deviation, multiplied by √252. Downside deviation is the square root of the average squared shortfall below 0%, counting all sessions, including zeros for gains.
Historical volatility: √(252 × average squared daily log return), matching the Vol page’s realized-volatility convention. This differs from the sample standard deviation used in Sharpe.
Each period requires complete history and at least 5 sessions. MTD and YTD follow the calendar; 1y is 252 sessions. Missing data or an undefined ratio displays — with a reason. Short periods can produce unstable ratios; intraday snapshots include a partial session. History before this basket’s creation is backtested. If a new basket has no stored daily return series yet, estimates from its rounded published chart levels are marked ≈.
Current members and the reasoning behind each inclusion. Returns are for individual holdings.
| Why it’s included | Added | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ACNAccenture | Consulting both wins AI projects and cannibalizes seats — the contested case | +2.1% | +10.7% | +27.7% | -11.4% | 2026-06-11 |
| ITGartner | Gartner: subscription research/advisory whose deliverables LLMs increasingly draft | -0.9% | +7.4% | +10.5% | -18.6% | 2026-06-11 |
| CTSHCognizant | IT outsourcing: AI deflation of billable hours | +0.4% | +11.5% | +10.3% | -19.0% | 2026-06-11 |
| FDSFactSet | Financial data/research workflows exposed to LLM substitution | -0.1% | +5.0% | +6.3% | +5.4% | 2026-06-11 |
| OMCOmnicom Group | Creative ad production deflated by generative tools | -0.2% | +5.3% | +5.2% | +2.9% | 2026-06-11 |
| CDWCDW | IT reseller/VAR: hardware-attach and services intermediation squeezed as spend shifts to hyperscalers | -2.5% | +5.8% | +2.9% | +12.2% | 2026-06-11 |
Equal-weighted; monthly rebalance, buy-and-hold between rebalances; dated membership changes reset the target weights.
Tracked since 2026-06-11. Membership decisions are documented below.
Read the methodology →Basket returns include dividends. “vs S&P 500” compares the basket’s compounded growth with the benchmark’s. Green means positive; red means negative.
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.
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.
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.
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).
Initial composition: 5 names. IPG excluded (Omnicom merger), MTCH excluded (index membership uncertain).