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America's Five Biggest Tech Stocks Lost $97 Billion Friday (yahoo.com) 98

An anonymous reader quotes CNBC: The so-called "big five" -- Apple , Alphabet Class A shares, Microsoft , Facebook and Amazon -- lost more than $97.5 billion in market value between the close on Thursday and the close on Friday, according to FactSet, dragging the Nasdaq to its worst week of the year. Shares of Apple fell nearly 4 percent on Friday, while the other four companies fell more than 3 percent. For most of the day, only 3 stocks in the S&P 500 tech sector were in the green: IBM , Teradata and Western Union . Apple, Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, and Alphabet all traded more than 2 times their 30-day average volume... "They're just plain overbought," said David Bahnsen founder, managing director and chief investment officer of The Bahnsen Group, a private wealth management firm. "They are extremely stretched from a valuation standpoint."
CNN notes the drop occurred "after a Goldman Sachs analyst questioned this year's run-up in the industry's five biggest names." They also added that "The top five techs today account for 13% of the market value weighting in the S&P 500, even though they are only 1% of the companies in the index."
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America's Five Biggest Tech Stocks Lost $97 Billion Friday

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  • Facebook Amazon Netflix Google

    After some shuffling around and a name change, now FAAAM

    Don't worry, they went up so much lately, a little pullback and profit-taking was bound to happen. Nothing goes up forever.

  • by Gravis Zero ( 934156 ) on Saturday June 10, 2017 @11:53AM (#54592329)

    This is really just the fallout from the devastating news on Friday that Microsoft is closing up shop on Docs.com. [slashdot.org] It's madness, sheer madness I say! ;)

  • It's all funny money anyway. Just know when to cash out.

  • by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 10, 2017 @11:59AM (#54592359)

    Why do people own stocks? There are three primary reasons:

    1. Control.

    The mindset that prevails now among tech companies, and especially those founded by Silicon Valley types, is that investors are a necessary evil to be controlled. So they issue special shares to themselves to ensure that no matter how many shares somebody else owns, they still have control. It's a giant middle finger to the average investor whom the Silicon Valley types have zero respect for. Why would you want to invest in a company that doesn't care about you or your capital? It's like paying for the privilege of being abused. So in the case of these tech companies control is essentially impossible which eliminates this reason to own the stock.

    2. Dividends.

    Another reason to own a stock is to have a claim to a share of the profits that are distributed periodically to the owners. Some tech companies pay a dividend and some don't but even those that do offer a relatively miserly amount compared to their profits and market valuation. A look at tech company balance sheets reveals huge war chests full of cash or equivalent short term liquid investments. Doesn't this money belong to the shareholders? Why do the tech companies need such large hordes of cash in what is essentially a low capital equipment expense business? Again, this signals a lack of respect for the shareholders.

    3. Capital Appreciation.

    The final reason to own a stock is to have a stake in a growing business that will, by virtue of the business becoming larger and more profitable, grow in value over time. However, in the case of these tech companies, the lack of control makes any liquidation event, even in the distant future, a theoretical impossibility during the lifetime of the founder and probably for some time afterward too since tech billionaires like to put their shares into charitable trusts for long term social engineering projects. These trusts will probably continue to monopolize these assets for decades after the passing of the founders. Where is the capital appreciation if nobody can ever get control and liquidate the stakes?

    Given all of these factors, how is tech an attractive investment? It looks more like a vehicle for speculation to me, at least for the average investor.

    • Silicon Valley learned from older companies what happens when you let shareholders run the show entirely. Corporate Raiders, leveraged buyouts, asset stripping, golden parachutes (used to counter raiders, now abused by management).

      Shareholder driven mean short term only, long term profitability be dammed.

      Now, has tech taken it too far in the other direction? Probably. As for the warchests, no, those do NOT exclusively belong to shareholders. Shareholders are only one of many stakeholders in a company, along

      • by Anonymous Coward

        Shareholders are only one of many stakeholders in a company, along with management, employees, and customers.

        Irrelevant. Management and employees are paid according to contract for their services, they have no further claim on the assets of the corporation. The assets belong to the owners of the corporation, which in the case of a publicly traded corporation are the stockholders. The customers are free to buy the products or services of the corporation or not. Likewise, they have no legitimate claim on the assets of the corporation simply by virtue of their being customers.

        If shareholders direct the company in a way that you lose all the productive employees, thereby killing the company, what was the point?

        Which is why intelligent shareholders don

  • And others (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Kohath ( 38547 ) on Saturday June 10, 2017 @12:03PM (#54592387)

    Lots of other tech stocks also got hit after big runups this year. Unless there's a war, it should just be a pause though.

    We have low unemployment and rising wages. Cloud computing is still ramping up. Semiconductor companies can look forward to VR and AR, autonomous driving, 5G, AI, industrial automation, defense projects, video gaming, and IoT for above-GDP growth opportunities over the next 2-5 years and beyond. Network buildouts in the US for 5G, in China for better connectivity outside major cities, and eventually in India will be the future story for communication equipment makers.

    Things are still running along nicely, but even the strongest runners need to take a rest sometimes.

    • by Anonymous Coward

      Counterpoint:

      A massive number of unprofitable startups have been funneling VC money into cloud services to support their doomed software and once that dries up, cloud grown will stall and the whole thing will come crashing down.

      • Counterpoint:

        A massive number of unprofitable startups have been funneling VC money into cloud services to support their doomed software and once that dries up, cloud grown will stall and the whole thing will come crashing down.

        We heard the same thing about building out fiber. There was going to be too much fiber in the ground and prices would fall and companies would lose revenue and need to cut back and overcharge consumers in other areas to make payments on their loans and that didn't happen.

        Oh wait.

    • We have low unemployment

      With all due respect, you're either a [moronic] shill... or a moron.

  • Have they tried the back of the couch?

    Or if the weather was different they might have worn a different coat.

  • by radarskiy ( 2874255 ) on Saturday June 10, 2017 @03:15PM (#54593177)

    AAPL: 5% off split adjusted all-time high, set less than 1 month ago

    AMZN: 3.8% off split adjusted all-time high, set less than a week ago

    FB: 4% off split adjusted all-time high, set same day

    GOOGL: 3.8% off split adjusted all-time high, set less than a week ago

    MSFT: 3.5% off split adjusted all-time high, set less than a week ago

    No drop more than 5% and four of five set new all-time highs this week. What part of this does not look like profit-taking?

  • "America's Five Biggest Tech Stocks Lost $97 Billion Friday"

    Ha ha...err, I mean, "OMG, that's terrible!"

    You mean Mark Zuckerberg is worth a billion less than he was yesterday? Can we take up a collection for the poor guy?

  • Wait? What?

    Google is down to levels not scene since May?!

    --Q

  • by burtosis ( 1124179 ) on Saturday June 10, 2017 @06:28PM (#54593833)
    Step 1: Short major tech stocks to the tune of billions with accounts obfuscated through a beach of shell companies.

    Step 2: Your analyst "Has a press release noting that they are overvalued"

    Step 3: Wipe with thousand dollar bills for the rest of your days.

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