It’s a December many won’t want to remember.
Stocks have been on track for a losing month, and as reinforcements of the central theme of the 2022 selloff in stocks, earlier early pandemic highs were feeling the brunt of the pain.
Analysts at Bespoke Investment Group looked at the 10 stocks that make up the New York Stock Exchange’s FANG+ index, which aims to track the 10 best-selling tech giants, in a note on Wednesday.
They noted that Amazon.com Inc. AMZN,
On Tuesday, the third megacap index, Facebook parent Meta Platforms Inc. Along with META,
and Netflix Inc. NFLX,
Below its closing low in March 2020 due to the COVID crash.
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The chart above shows that the 10 index components entered the year with a combined market capitalization of $12.3 trillion and were on track to end the year with a combined market capitalization of just over $7 trillion, analysts said.
While Apple Inc. AAPL,
fell the least in terms of share price change over the year, with the largest market cap loss of $844 billion. Amazon saw its market cap drop by $843 billion, nearly halved. Tesla Inc. TSLA,
Along with Amazon, it is one of only two names to drop out of the $1 trillion market cap club this year.
As for the FANG+ index, it peaked in early November last year and has since fallen 46%, Bespoke noted. Analysts noted that the decline follows a recent failed breakout above its downtrend wave, as the index is now back within 5% of last November’s lows. They noted that on a relative basis, the group had been underperforming the broader market for longer with a high recorded in February last year.
The aggressive pace of interest rate hikes by the Federal Reserve in 2022 pushed up US Treasury yields. That’s what accounts for much of this year’s stock market carnage, particularly the megacap rally in the stocks that make up the FANG+ index. Growth stocks, whose high valuations were based on expectations of strong future earnings and cash flows, are particularly sensitive to rising yields. When Treasury yields rise, the value of those future earnings is discounted more heavily.
For the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite COMP,
is down about 10.5% so far this month, putting it on track for its worst December performance on record. The Nasdaq is down more than 34% this year.
S&P 500 SPX,
was on track to decline 6.8% in December and is down more than 20% year-to-date, on track for its worst annual performance since 2008.
it fared better, falling 4.4% in December and heading for a 9% decline in 2022.
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