You are correct Jane. The tech sector is tied to the 10 year note.i know, it's really stupid. i have the jitters from the past two weeks--i was in on a few tech things too high. i'm breaking even on this silly buying and selling but that's obviously not the goal. i think the goal has to be to avoid positions on some of this tech unless we get big discounts again because i swear it's tied to that treasury note, at least until the pattern changes.
i buy and sell sometimes in pre-market and it's ok. nothing i do is anything but tiny scale. i sold palantir and i won't even tell you what i bought. too embarrassing.
Most of these companies trade based on future sales/earnings.
When interest rates go up, those numbers are not worth as much.
Have you ever read about DCF?
Here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discounted_cash_flow
This will help explain why the high flyers sell-off on a fear of rising rates, plus if you're going to keep trading/investing, you'll need to have a strong grasp of this metric.
All that said, stocks still move on whatever the herd is doing, both collectively and individually.
Tough game. Its good you're keeping it small.
If you're still getting jittery, make it smaller.
Demo accounts are stupid imo, you have to have skin in the game.
But keeping it small while learning really helps.