Technology stocks have been a feature of many headlines in the past week. Whilst Facebook experienced losses of 20% on Thursday, Amazon’s quarterly profits hit a record $2.5bn. Facebook announced that revenue growth was slowing, as well as the number of new users not growing as quickly as they have previously. Following the EU’s introduction of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), Facebook has seen a decline in the number of both daily and monthly European Facebook users. Furthermore, the number of US users has remained the same with no growth over the past year, deepening concerns over Facebook’s future and in turn, driving the share price down. Mark Zuckerberg personally lost $20bn in wealth after the share price fell.
Whilst Twitter is not regarded one of the main explosively growing FAANG (Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, Google) tech stocks, its shares also experienced a sharp drop on Friday after the number of active users has fallen for the social media network. After Amazon reported their above-mentioned record results, the share price grew 4.2% on Thursday last week. Despite the €4.3bn fine recently imposed by the EU, the share price of Alphabet, Google’s parent company, rose by 4% at the beginning of last week. The divergence in performance of these FAANG stocks is starting to grow.
This is definitely not the demise of these tech stocks, but their growth is slowing as demands for services change and evolve over time, with Facebook and Twitter seeing large shifts in their demographics. The industry is seeing a shift from FAANGs to MAGA. Not Trump’s campaign slogan Make America Great Again, but Microsoft, Apple, Google and Amazon. These tech stocks are taking over from the FAANGs as stock market favourites.
US growth was at its fastest rate since 2014 last week, largely due to a surge in consumer spending, but also as farmers are increasing exports of soybeans to China ahead of the tariffs. Other US exports also grew at their fastest rate since 2013 as companies moved forwards to beat the application of tariffs. Talks between the US and EU over trade have also now been resolved, with original tariff threats dropped by the US. The US still have tariffs on steel and aluminium imports, but they are working together towards zero tariff trade.
In the EU, Michel Barnier, the chief Brexit negotiator for the EU, has ruled out Theresa May’s customs proposal of the UK collecting custom taxes on its behalf. He has stated that the EU would not delegate the collection of customs to a non-member. However, he has confirmed that progress has been made with a meeting agreed for mid-August to continue discussions, with a view to a deal in October.
The week ahead is a busy one for central banks, as both the Monetary Policy Committee of the Bank of England, and The Federal Open Market Committee Meeting of the Federal Reserve meet to discuss interest rates.
