A week before coronavirus crashed the price of oil, tech giants Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, and Google (FANG) together added $251 billion to their market values — their biggest gain since Mark Zuckerberg took his social media platform public in 2012, reports the Wall Street Journal.
In fact, tech stocks have outperformed the wider market since the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic spurred record sell-offs in March.
The FANG+ index, a set that includes the likes of Apple, Alibaba, Tesla, and Twitter, is actually up by almost 10% year-to-date.
[Read: Amazon stock hits new all-time high as coronavirus spurs demand]
On the other hand, the S&P 500 index — a popular collection of 500 stocks that represents the overall US market — is down by just under 14% over the same period.
“[Big tech stocks] are the old reliable and old standby for portfolio managers,” one portfolio manager told the WSJ. “Nobody is going to get fired for adding Apple stock in a downturn like this.”
However, Hard Fork reported that Wall Street gurus Goldman Sachs had recently downgraded Apple stock to a “sell.” The firm’s analysts predicted that iPhone shipments would slow by 36% later this year, which could see its stock price drop nearly 20% from current prices.
So, the markets generally appear confident that tech’s biggest can thrive in the new coronavirus-inspired consumer landscape, but the truth will only come out in their Q1 earnings reports, which are scheduled to start dropping over the next few weeks.
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