Oct 28, 2022 - Economy

Dot-com bust 2.0 is becoming a reality

Data: FactSet; Chart: Axios Visuals
Data: FactSet; Chart: Axios Visuals

There's a distinctly dot-com-ish feel at the moment, as even tech companies that once seemed untouchable are taking massive tumbles in the stock market, Axios Markets author Matt Phillips reports.

Why it matters: Stocks that led the market for much of the past decade have fallen on hard times after surprisingly weak earnings from major tech companies.

  • Meta's 75% collapse since its September 2021 peak has destroyed more than $800 billion in stock market wealth.
  • Amazon shares collapsed after it, too, posted disappointing results — and a Q4 warning — at the close of trading Thursday.
Amazon share price
Data: FactSet; Chart: Axios Visuals

The other side: Twitter and Apple are exceptions to the rule.

  • Elon Musk closed his deal to purchase Twitter at $54.20 per share. One source inside Twitter noted they wouldn't be surprised if Twitter's stock would have been trading at $15 sans the deal drama — a figure similar to some of its competitors like Snap and Pinterest, Axios' Sara Fischer and Dan Primack write.
  • Apple announced earnings on Thursday that narrowly exceeded expectations and became an exception to the recent drop in some Big Tech stock prices.

Zoom out: The tech stock collapse has drawn comparisons to the industry's last bubble, which burst in the early 2000s.

  • The original dot-com bubble — which peaked in March 2000 — burst with a slow-moving crash that sank the S&P 500 by roughly 50%.
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