Would California home prices tumble if tech stocks crashed?

Editor’s note: This is the second of two columns on how technology stocks relate to California’s economy. Fears are growing that another golden age for technology, key to California’s economy, could end with a Wall Street thud. Investors’ love affair with tech stocks seems tenuous, at best. You’d think that could hurt California home prices, but history suggests the state’s housing market often ignores steep declines in technology shares – with a catch. That’s what my trusty spreadsheet discovered when it compared a half-century of swings in the Nasdaq Composite Index, tech’s key stock benchmark, with California home prices, measured by a Federal Housing Finance Agency index. To put these economic yardsticks on a level playing field, we used subdued calculations: one-year changes based on quarterly averages. So by this math, late 2026’s tech-stock slump shows the Nasdaq still up 8% in a year through October. That’s a huge cooldown from one-year gains nearing 50% in April. Related Artic