Options insurance. Hedging with Treasuries. Using sentiment to pick a bottom. The things that have lessened the pain of past equity selloffs are coming up short this time around.

As corporate leaders increase their grim pronouncements about the future, there are still market economists who see stocks heading higher in the second half of this year and who say the US could sidestep a recession.

First it was a rout in the stay-at-home names that surged in the pandemic. Then speculative software makers with barely any earnings went south. Now the giant technology names whose sway on benchmarks has been decried by bears for years are dragging the market down.

Investors are flooding into exchange-traded funds focused on semiconductor stocks, wagering the industry will rebound from the supply-chain snags and chip shortage that have dragged the shares lower.