Tech Selloff Goes Global: What I Learned Losing Everything in 2022

In 2021, I watched my portfolio climb every single week. Tech, crypto, growth stocks — everything was green. I remember thinking: this is easy. Then Q2 2022 arrived. And I learned there is no such thing as “easy” in markets. This week, Bloomberg reported a tech-led selloff that rippled from US markets across Asia, reigniting the debate: has the AI-driven equity rally gone too far, too fast? Reading that headline, I saw my 2021 self — the one who also believed a strong enough narrative would never reverse.

📌 What’s Happening

• A sharp tech selloff hit US markets on Tuesday, dragging Asian equities lower before a partial recovery in early Asian trading the following morning
• The core concern: the AI-driven rally that powered markets from 2023 onward may have stretched valuations well beyond what fundamentals can justify
• Large funds and foreign institutional investors are revisiting tech valuations — in a high-rate environment, lofty P/E multiples face much harder scrutiny
• Asia’s quick partial rebound is notable but not yet a confirmed trend — it may reflect technical buying rather than genuine risk reassessment

Source: www.bloomberg.com

What I See

I lived through 2021 — the year when everything went up and everyone felt like a genius. When a narrative is sexy enough — back then it was crypto and growth stocks, now it’s AI — money pours in fast and almost nobody asks “why is the price at this level?” I didn’t ask that question. By Q2 2022, the market answered it for me, and the answer was brutal. When I look at this tech selloff, I don’t see catastrophe. I see the market finally starting to ask the valuation question it should have asked earlier.

Here’s the question I notice almost nobody is asking out loud: how much actual revenue — not expectation, not narrative, but revenue recorded in financial statements — is AI generating right now? When rates are low, discounting very distant future cash flows is tolerated. When rates are high, that same distant future gets discounted much more aggressively — and a beautiful story is no longer enough. This isn’t theory. I lost real money in 2022 precisely because I didn’t understand this mechanism.

For women building financial independence: a selloff like this is not a signal to panic, and it’s not a signal to rush in and buy. It’s a reminder that understanding what you hold — and why — matters far more than how much you hold. I learned that the most expensive way possible.

🔍 The Number Worth Watching

Not the size of the selloff itself — but the speed of Asia’s partial recovery immediately after. When markets bounce quickly on bad news, it can mean two completely opposite things: either the underlying fundamentals are strong enough to absorb the shock, or investors haven’t actually repriced risk yet — they’re just buying the dip out of habit. For individual investors, the difference between these two scenarios is enormous. I mistook a technical rebound for a genuine bottom in 2022. That mistake was expensive.

📊 How This Could Ripple Into Vietnam — My Personal Observations

This reflects my personal observations only — not investment advice.

Short Term (1–3 months)

From what I’ve observed, whenever there’s a global risk-off episode — whether triggered by a tech selloff or anything else — foreign institutional money tends to exit frontier and emerging markets like Vietnam first. In 2022, as the Fed raised rates aggressively, sustained foreign selling pushed VN-Index from around 1,500 points all the way down to 911.9 on November 15, 2022 — a drop of more than 40% from its peak, the worst performing major index in the world at that time. I’m not saying that scenario repeats. But foreign fund flows are always the first variable I watch when volatility hits developed markets.

Medium Term (3–12 months)

Looking back at the 2018 US-China trade war — markets panicked short-term, but Vietnam actually benefited over the following 12-24 months as manufacturing orders shifted from China to Vietnamese factories. This time around, if tech sector turbulence slows the expansion plans of major US and global tech companies, the question becomes: does that affect the pipeline of semiconductor and electronics FDI flowing into Vietnam, where several major names are already committed? I don’t have a confident answer yet. But I’m watching the tech FDI announcements closely over the next few quarters.

Long Term (1 year+)

Whatever this tech selloff does in the short run, I observe one structural trend that doesn’t change: Vietnam sits at the intersection of several powerful long-term forces — a young demographic, a supply chain globally reconfiguring away from single-source dependency, and an ongoing path toward stock market reclassification from frontier to emerging market status. Short-term selloffs like this one, in my observation, rarely alter the long-term structural story — but they can shift the timing and price at which large capital eventually enters.

To be clear: I am not recommending buying or selling any asset. Everyone has different risk tolerance and financial circumstances — please do your own research or consult a qualified professional before making any decision.

I Once…

In 2021, I believed in momentum. My portfolio looked great, and I genuinely thought my university finance knowledge was enough to beat the market. I never questioned valuations. I had no real risk management system. I just bought what was going up. Then Q2 2022 arrived — VN-Index started falling and didn’t stop. I lost my entire portfolio. And then, on top of that, I lost hundreds of millions of Vietnamese dong to Mr. Pip’s fake forex platforms. I was 24 or 25, young and convinced I was talented. In reality, I had just been right at the right time — and I confused that with actual skill. It wasn’t until I started working with anh Chí Hiếu Nguyễn and the Faviz Investment team that I began to understand what real investing looks like: slow, systematic, and never betting what you cannot afford to lose.

This tech selloff brings back the feeling of 2021 — everyone excited, nobody wanting to hear about risk. Where are you right now in your own emotional cycle with the market — excited, cautious, or have you started asking the harder questions? Book a free consultation