If you’re rolling with a tech-heavy investment strategy, maybe it’s best you don’t take a look at your portfolio on Tuesday afternoon.
A red day on Wall Street was punctuated by major drops from the FANG stocks — Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, and Google — with the tech giants combining for their worst performance in three years.
Netflix “led” the way, with a 6.14 percent slide on Tuesday, falling to about $301 per share. Facebook’s recent skid continued as well, dropping nearly 5 percent to $152.22 a share on the day. The social network was already battered heading into Tuesday, after falling more than 13 percent last week in the aftermath of the Cambridge Analytica data leak revelation. CEO Mark Zuckerberg will testify to Congress on the matter in the coming weeks, CNN reported early on Tuesday.
Facebook’s Wall Street slide continued on Tuesday (per Google)
Google fell 4.47 percent to a shade about $1,006 per share. And even Amazon, which has been on a blitz since the start of 2018, was hit by the widespread selloff, dropping 3.78 percent to $1,497 a share.
The tech losses highlighted the pain investors felt across the market, with the Dow Jones, S&P 500, and Nasdaq all falling more than 1.4 percent, respectively. One day after President Trump tweeted his approval of the third biggest points jump in Dow history, the index fell more than 300 points on Tuesday.
The biggest tech flop, however, came outside the FANG foursome: Twitter was rocked, cratering 12 percent to about $28 per share after Citron Research said it was betting the stock would fall.
6 Tech Giants Shaking Up News, From Jeff Bezos to Laurene Powell Jobs (Photos)
Tech leaders are increasingly intertwined with the news business. While some want to support old properties, one set out to destroy a new one. Here they are.
Jeff Bezos – Washington Post
The Amazon founder purchased the Washington Post in 2013 for $250 million in cash. President Trump has called the paper the “Amazon Washington Post.”
The Facebook co-founder purchased The New Republic in 2012, becoming executive chairman and publisher. However, he sold the venerable political magazine to Win McCormack in 2016, saying he "underestimated the difficulty of transitioning an old and traditional institution into a digital media company in today’s quickly evolving climate."
The eBay founder is a well-known philanthropist who created First Look Media, a journalism venture behind The Intercept. Inspired by Edward Snowden's leaks. Omidyar teamed up with journalists Glenn Greenwald, Jeremy Scahill and Laura Poitras to launch the website “dedicated to the kind of reporting those disclosures required: fearless, adversarial journalism.”
The PayPal co-founder doesn’t own a news organization, but he makes this list because he essentially ended one -- Gawker -- proving once again the power of an angry billionaire. Thiel secretly bankrolled Hulk Hogan’s sex-tape lawsuit against Gawker Media because he was upset that the website once outed him as gay. Hogan won the defamation lawsuit against the site that sent its parent company into bankruptcy, and Gawker.com is no longer operating.
OK, so Facebook isn’t technically a news organization… yet. However, the company is preparing to launch its much-anticipated lineup of original content later this summer, and there are also signs that it's on the verge of becoming an even bigger media platform.
Campbell Brown, Head of News Partnerships at Facebook, confirmed last week it’s developing a subscription service for publishers willing to post articles directly to Facebook Instant Articles, rather than their native websites.
Tech is increasingly intertwined with news, for better or worse
Tech leaders are increasingly intertwined with the news business. While some want to support old properties, one set out to destroy a new one. Here they are.