The 20 Worst S&P 500 Stocks of 2025's First Half Revealed
A brutal first half crushed these 20 S&P 500 names as AI disruption fears hammered investor confidence.
If you held any of these 20 stocks through the first half of 2026, you felt the pain. These were the biggest laggards in the entire S&P 500, and the story behind the sell-off is one you need to understand before the second half begins.
The common thread? Fear. Specifically, investor fear that AI tools are coming for these companies' core revenue streams. When the market starts pricing in market-share loss to artificial intelligence, it doesn't wait for proof — it acts fast and asks questions later. That's exactly what happened here.
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This wasn't a broad market meltdown. The S&P 500 had winners. But these 20 stocks got singled out, which tells you something important: the AI disruption trade is now sector-specific and ruthless. Investors aren't punishing every company — they're targeting the ones they believe AI will eat alive.
The lesson for retail traders is straightforward. Exposure to businesses that sell services or tools that AI can replicate or replace is now a real portfolio risk — not a hypothetical one. If your thesis for holding a stock depends on human-driven workflows staying dominant, you need to pressure-test that thesis right now.
Don't just watch this list as a post-mortem. Use it as a forward-looking screen. The stocks that got crushed in the first half could either be value traps or massive bounce candidates — and knowing which requires understanding exactly why each one fell. Continue reading at MarketWatch.com
