Investors were dumping FAANG stocks again Friday and there just may be some very plausible explanations as to why that’s happening after an apparent rebound from a correction over and done with.
FAANG stocks fell 13% in a span of several weeks in September. Valuations were in re-rate mode as at-home growth services like cloud computing, data center storage, e-commerce and streaming may have seen a massive demand pulled forward from later years in the maturity cycle of these businesses. Friday, FAANG stocks were down more than 2% by 2:15 PM EDT. Cyclical stocks, on a day which employment figures missed estimates and caused some investor anxiety in the morning about the speed of the economic recovery, mostly rose. And the 10-Year Treasury yield rose to as much as 0.70% from 0.67%. That indicates growing inflation expectations, which indicates a recovering economy and means investors do not have to take risk with high-multiple growth stocks, as some beaten value stocks like airlines and restaurants can move up with the economy.
Yet Friday’s sell-off was all about tech.
Here’s one potential explanation:
“People are looking to fund some of the other [trades],” by selling large cap tech stocks,” Marc Preffer, chief investment officer at CLS Investments told TheStreet. “The IPOs the last couple of weeks — it’s possible you’ve been seeing other technology stocks go down and they [investors] are just looking to make room for purchases. The first place people go for that [funding other stock purchases] — selling some of the old tech and into these new technology companies.”
The pressing question on FAANG stocks the last few years — all risk factors considered — has been whether their outperformance can continue, whether the premium near-term earnings growth relative to value sectors will be outweighed by their maturing disruptive