Bitcoin decouples from software stocks, signaling investor shifts

For most of the past five years, Bitcoin and software stocks moved like they shared a nervous system. When institutional money flowed into risk assets, both went up. When it fled, both went down. That relationship is now breaking, and the split is worth paying attention to. Since May 14, 2026, the iShares Expanded Tech-Software Sector ETF, known as IGV, has climbed roughly 12%. Bitcoin, over the same stretch, has fallen about 10%. That is a 22-percentage-point gap in a matter of weeks, one of the sharpest divergences between the two assets after a prolonged period of close alignment. From lockstep to split screen The 20-day rolling correlation between Bitcoin and IGV has now dropped to 0.58, down from the tight alignment that characterized most of early 2026. A correlation of 1.0 means perfect lockstep; 0.58 means the relationship is still positive but has meaningfully loosened. IGV itself has had a strong run. The ETF has rallied 36% since April 10, 2026, reclaiming its 200-day moving average in the process. The software sector’s recovery came partly as investors reassessed the AI disruption narrative that had weighed on names like Oracle, Microsoft, and Palantir earlier in the cy...