Tech Stocks’ Bleak Day; Cerebras Gets Good News

Wow. Wednesday was not a fun day, particularly if you’re a Verizon customer (guilty!), thanks to a widespread cellular phone outage that hit many of its subscribers for much of the day. It also wasn’t fun for tech investors as stocks sold off across the board. What wasn’t uniform, though, was the severity of the selling. Microsoft, Amazon and Meta Platforms each dropped about 2.4%, while Alphabet, nowadays everyone’s favorite tech company, only lost 0.04% of its value. Apple was also relatively better off, dropping just 0.4%. Nvidia fell 1.4%.

Does Wednesday’s selling say anything about what the rest of the year holds? Perhaps. Bloomberg reported that investors are shifting out of tech into other industries. Indeed, so far this year, the big tech names are mostly down by single-digit percentages, aside from Alphabet, which is up 7%, and last year’s poorest big tech performer, Amazon, which has gained 2.5%. It makes sense that investors are getting even pickier. For all its promise, the AI revolution that has lifted big tech stocks for the past three years remains enormously risky, with the outcome uncertain.