Technology
Earnings Scoreboard: A Turbulent Week in Tech [Chart]
Earnings Scoreboard: A Turbulent Week in Tech [Chart]
Amazon and Facebook soar, while Apple, Netflix, and Google whiff
The Chart of the Week is a weekly Visual Capitalist feature on Fridays.
For many blue chip companies, earnings season can end up being relatively dry.
For example, yesterday MasterCard reported an earnings “beat” of $0.86 earnings per share (EPS) compared to the $0.85 consensus. The stock inched up 0.7% in afternoon trading and now it’s back down today. In other words, it’s business as usual again.
However, for the world’s technology giants, earnings season can make or break a stock. The reason for this is simple: investors buy technology companies such as Amazon or Netflix for their future growth prospects, rather than their current profitability. In theory, these companies should have an incredible ability to scale, and the market prices this in to make these stocks more expensive.
If a company shows signs that it is growing slower than expected, investors punish the stock with the expectation of a ripple effect on future cash flows.
The Tech Scoreboard
The last week has been particularly eventful on the tech earnings front, and Jim Cramer’s “FANG” stocks were the center of the action. After buoying the market for much of 2015, the stocks went their separate directions.
Netflix kicked it off with a huge whiff. While revenues and EPS were on track for the quarter, its guidance on subscriber growth was the ringing of a big alarm bell. Wall Street was looking for the company to add 3.5 million international subscribers in Q2, but Netflix said it would only be adding two million. The stock has tanked spectacularly ever since, losing -18.3% in value.
Alphabet and Apple, the two most valuable public companies in the world by market capitalization, also showed signs of a struggle. Both stocks are now down close to -10% from pre-earnings, shedding a combined $100 billion in value. Apple posted its first year-over-year decline in quarterly revenue since 2003, while Google’s parent company fell short on both top and bottom lines. Co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page have lost a combined $3.8 billion in wealth since the report.
While this is all very dire for the tech sector, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg came to the rescue.
Yesterday, Amazon killed it for the quarter, bringing in an extra $1.1 billion of revenue above Street estimates. The company reported its largest quarterly profit, and analysts are now ecstatic about the company’s blowout quarter. The stock is up close to 10% today.
Facebook also helped save face for Silicon Valley, and shares have now hit an all-time high as the company beat projected revenues and earnings.
Markets
Charted: What are Retail Investors Interested in Buying in 2023?
What key themes and strategies are retail investors looking at for the rest of 2023? Preview: AI is a popular choice.

Charted: Retail Investors’ Top Picks for 2023
U.S. retail investors, enticed by a brief pause in the interest rate cycle, came roaring back in the early summer. But what are their investment priorities for the second half of 2023?
We visualized the data from Public’s 2023 Retail Investor Report, which surveyed 1,005 retail investors on their platform, asking “which investment strategy or themes are you interested in as part of your overall investment strategy?”
Survey respondents ticked all the options that applied to them, thus their response percentages do not sum to 100%.
Where Are Retail Investors Putting Their Money?
By far the most popular strategy for retail investors is dividend investing with 50% of the respondents selecting it as something they’re interested in.
Dividends can help supplement incomes and come with tax benefits (especially for lower income investors or if the dividend is paid out into a tax-deferred account), and can be a popular choice during more inflationary times.
Investment Strategy | Percent of Respondents |
---|---|
Dividend Investing | 50% |
Artificial Intelligence | 36% |
Total Stock Market Index | 36% |
Renewable Energy | 33% |
Big Tech | 31% |
Treasuries (T-Bills) | 31% |
Electric Vehicles | 27% |
Large Cap | 26% |
Small Cap | 24% |
Emerging Markets | 23% |
Real Estate | 23% |
Gold & Precious Metals | 23% |
Mid Cap | 19% |
Inflation Protection | 13% |
Commodities | 12% |
Meanwhile, the hype around AI hasn’t faded, with 36% of the respondents saying they’d be interested in investing in the theme—including juggernaut chipmaker Nvidia. This is tied for second place with Total Stock Market Index investing.
Treasury Bills (30%) represent the safety anchoring of the portfolio but the ongoing climate crisis is also on investors’ minds with Renewable Energy (33%) and EVs (27%) scoring fairly high on the interest list.
Commodities and Inflation-Protection stocks on the other hand have fallen out of favor.
Come on Barbie, Let’s Go Party…
Another interesting takeaway pulled from the survey is how conversations about prevailing companies—or the buzz around them—are influencing trades. The platform found that public investors in Mattel increased 6.6 times after the success of the ‘Barbie’ movie.
Bud Light also saw a 1.5x increase in retail investors, despite receiving negative attention from their fans after the company did a beer promotion campaign with trans influencer Dylan Mulvaney.
Given the origin story of a large chunk of American retail investors revolves around GameStop and AMC, these insights aren’t new, but they do reveal a persisting trend.
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