Once market darlings, tech stocks enter 'prove-it-to-me' era

More than a third of tech stocks in S&P 500 have declined in 2018

Investors rattled by recent volatility are becoming choosier about which technology-focused stocks they scoop up, a reversal from 2017 that threatens to undermine the tech sector’s dominance in the long stock rally.

The S&P 500 tech sector, up 1.8% in 2018, is still among the best-performing groups in the broader index. But more than a third of the 69 stocks in the sector have declined in 2018, the most for any full year since 2011. In 2017, only six of them had lost ground.

The divisions are likely to come into sharper focus as more tech-focused companies report financial results in the