Friday, I did an article about a venture capital investor warning that the stock market party was all but over. Was he right?
Between Thursday and Friday, August 20-21, 2015, the stock market lost more than 5% of it’s entire net worth. Friday alone, the NYSE lost more than 530 points. Global markets did just as bad. Tech and online companies took a hard hit. Friday, Twitter lost 6% of their stocks. At one point, they went to an all-time low of $26 a share. They’re still at their record low. Apple lost over 8% of it’s market last week. For Apple, that equals $158 billion dollars of hard work and careful planning just vanishing into thin air. All the gains they had so far in the eight months of 2015 were wiped out in less than one week. Computer maker Hewlett Packard was lucky to gain 0.32% Friday. But they’re struggling with revenue as desktops sales dropped 20% just the previous quarter. Google, in the wake of their Alphabet announcement, lost over 5% of their stocks Friday. But perhaps the biggest loser last week was software company Intruit. They develop tax preparations for businesses and individuals. Friday, they lost over 13% of their stocks. Nobody prepared them for that.
I can’t stress this enough: We at Computer Geeks are not doom and gloom forecasters. But we can’t ignore reality. Investors are on edge. The global economy is shaky. And tech companies aren’t immune, not even giants like Apple and Google. Some say this is a perfect time to invest, in hopes that company stocks will eventually go up. There’s quite a bit of wisdom in that strategy. But what will next week hold for tech stocks on the NYSE and international markets? What will the next month or so hold? If you talk to a lot of financial experts, it’s nothing too good. Tech stocks fall. Now what?