SMB SEM Spend Follows the NASDAQ

From Palore based on their tracking of 3000 small businesses buying search marketing:

The trend line mimics the decline of the NASDAQ:

While “correlation does not equal causation,” there’s a pretty good bet that’s the case here. 

Another point: the spend amounts are interesting but is that the full budget, the money spent after the margin is extracted by a vendor/third party or a mix of both represented? In other words if $663 is the amount spent on paid search, is the “actual” SMB buy $1,000 with 40% taken off the top?