What Was Software Is India
The country-level read behind today's Morning 10 — the split we track inside the US tape, translated onto the map, with a referee print before the open.
The split, translated into countries
The divide running through the US tape — the semi complex repriced for build-out risk while software recovers — has a country-level twin, and the pairing is almost mechanical. Korea and Taiwan trade like the semiconductor fund: a huge year, then a violent month. EWY is up 61.6% this year and 117% over twelve months — and down 17.3% over the past month. Taiwan reads +52.0% for the year, −10.0% for the month; the semi fund itself +50.1% and −10.6%. Now put India next to software: INDA is down 7.9% in the year Korea did +62 — derated straight through the AI-fear phase while the hardware countries rallied — the same shape as the software fund’s −10.5%. What was software is India. What was semis is Korea and Taiwan.
Eighteen months, in stack order
The sequence matters more than the snapshot. Over the past year and a half the AI shock moved through countries in the order of their place in the stack. China repriced first, and upward, as the disruptor — the efficiency shock, then the model releases that followed it; China internet is up 11.3% over the past month while the hardware countries fell. US software took the SaaSpocalypse next. India took the offshore version: IT services are the purest labor-arbitrage business in public markets, exactly what agents attack first — the thesis behind the digital labor economy — and the Philippines’ BPO complex is the same trade in more concentrated form. Korea and Taiwan took the hardware violence only last month, twelve months after software took its derating. And Japan is taking it now as a funding question — a central bank filing AI demand as inflation, an intervention measured in trillions of yen — the disruption arriving in FX rather than equity. Software-countries got hit first; hardware-countries got hit last. India turning before Korea stabilises is not an anomaly. It is the order of the stack.
The bottom grammar
The evidence that India has bottomed is the same grammar software printed three months ago. The software fund put in its low and is +9.2% over three months; underneath the flat Indian headline index, the small caps are already leading — +5.6% over the same window, the classic first sign that selling is exhausted — and the Philippines shows the identical turn at +5.1%. The chart says the same thing in levels: the Nifty broke its long channel early this year, bottomed above 22,134, and has now come back to 24,384 — holding above the 23,229 line where the falling wedge resolved. Flat is the new down here: an index that stops falling on bad news while its small caps outperform is basing, not pausing.
Today’s referee: MakeMyTrip
India’s turn gets a single-name test before the open today. MakeMyTrip carried a triple overhang down from above 120 to the low 30s: the AI question first — do destination sites survive agent-mediated travel booking? — then a regional war sitting on airspace, a fatal crash, and official guidance that pointed holidaymakers home. The May print is the tell the diary cares about: the company missed on both lines — $0.32 against $0.37 expected, revenue below — and the stock stopped falling. When bad news stops working at a level, the market has finished pricing it. Since then the stock has risen more than 70% to $56.95 and now sits at the line near 59–60 where the downtrend meets the old shelf. Underneath sits the part of the bet none of the overhangs ever touched: a growing Indian middle class that travels more every year — the full fiscal year still booked $10.4 billion gross, a multi-year growth rate near 34% — and a platform positioned as an applier of AI on its own supply and demand rather than a disruptee. That is the same re-sort the market ran on US software: the derating hit everyone, the recovery separates the appliers from the disrupted.
Two referees, one grammar
Consensus for this morning sits near $0.15 on roughly $292 million in revenue. As always on referee days, the reaction is the signal, not the number: a reclaim of the 59–60 line on a print would be the India bottom confirmed in single-name form — good news starting to work exactly where bad news stopped. And the day is symmetrical: MakeMyTrip referees the India-software side at the open, Palantir referees the agentic-software cohort at the close, with ten straight beats behind it and the last three sold. One grammar, two time zones. The diary tracks both as information, not instruction.