SaaS Stocks Trade Below S&P 500 Valuation for First Time in Cloud Era — $2T Market Cap Destroyed
SaaStr·high signal
SaaStr analysis confirms software now trades at a discount to the S&P 500 for the first time ever in the cloud era, with forward P/E crashing from 84.1x (2020-2022 peak) to 22.7x (March 2026). The IGV software ETF fell 21%+ year-to-date with a ~30% decline from September 2025 peak. SaaStr estimates 'as much as 70%' of the slowdown relates to enterprise budgets flowing to AI infrastructure providers like Anthropic and OpenAI rather than traditional SaaS vendors.