Some Big Tech stocks are held key market cap levels last week even amid the selloff
Subscribers to Chart of the Week received this commentary on Sunday, August 3.
It turns out, the tech sector rotations in late July were just the warning shot across the bow. In a 72 hour period between Wednesday and Friday’s closing bell, stocks went from cheering a steady Fed for its renewed dovish rhetoric to panic-selling everything with a dollar sign on it. All the rosy economic outlooks were promptly replaced with pearl clutching and hand-wringing about an incoming recession. A nuanced, context-laden postmortem on this past week doesn’t mean ignoring the magnitude of what just went down. But it does mean avoiding sensationalism and instead focusing on ‘cui bono?’ or ‘to whom is it a benefit?’
In a similar tone taken during the first sign of broad market weakness in April, the market cap landscape helps identify which of these larger Big Tech backdrops have staying power, and which are pump fakes inflated by a technology we don’t yet fully understand.
The last two trading days of the week was more Murphy’s Law than the elusive ‘Goldilocks environment’ many investors were starting to envision for the second half of 2024. The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA), S&P 500 Index (SPX), and Nasdaq Composite (IXIC) all suffered Thursday-Friday drawdowns of 2.72%, 3.2% and 4.7%, respectively. These are the types of sharp, sudden you’d usually see during a global pandemic, or at the onset of some major geopolitical catastrophe. Instead, this steep stumble was a potent cocktail of lackluster large cap earnings reports – which we’ll get to below -- combined with a few concerning data points that ultimately threw a wrench into months of positive catalysts.
The table below is the new market cap order of the large cap tech companies after their respective second-quarter earnings reports. You can see Apple Inc (NASDAQ:AAPL) has overtaken Microsoft Corp (NASDAQ:MSFT) for the top spot, adding almost $1 trillion in market cap alone since late April. In terms of support, MSFT holding at $3 trillion is notable, as is Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL) holding at $2 trillion. And if you really want to stretch it, Nvidia Corp (NASDAQ:NVDA) sitting above $2.5 trillion is also worth monitoring.
Note also in the table above the recent two-day drawdowns, with Meta Platforms Inc (NASDAQ:META) zigging while the others zagged lower. Consider that most of these giants’ post-earnings reactions were either positive or muted, with Amazon.com Inc'S (NASDAQ:AMZN) gap lower -- from Aug. 2 -- was maybe exacerbated by broad market pressures. Lastly, when looking at the final column full of healthy year-to-date and year-over-year gains, most would conclude that this just a correction, right, because who in their right mind would be bet against Big Tech long term? Hopefully this helps you see the forest from the trees.
If there’s one barometer for Big Tech – and subsequently overall stock market health – that investors should be checking on periodically, it’s the long-term viability of artificial intelligence.
AI was mentioned ad nauseam on all of these Big Tech earnings calls. Companies are burning through cash trying to jostle for AI position. It’s been the latest hype cycle for the last 12 months, but some observers want off the crazy train. Earlier in June, Goldman Sach’s published a 31-page report titled: Gen AI: Too Much Spend, Too Little Benefit? This past week, Bloomberg wrote a piece titled ‘Big Tech Fails to Convince Wall Street That AI is Paying Off.’ The honeymoon phase may soon be over, and everyone is going to want to start seeing some results for the money they’re shoveling into this technology. Hitching your wagon to AI may have resulted in an initial hype cycle bump, but eventually, the bill always comes due.
It’s both enticing and terrifying to see a once premium stock like NVDA closer to $100 than $150. But whether you think this latest correction is long overdue or a panic-driven overreaction, don’t forget to heed the tried-and-true technical markers to avoid emotion from taking over.