Benzinga - by Piero Cingari, Benzinga Staff Writer.
The so-called Magnificent Seven — a moniker reserved for a group of high-growth tech companies — commenced 2024 on a shaky note, as their collective market cap plunged by $250 billion in the first trading session of the year.
Shares of Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) experienced the sharpest sell-off — over 4%. The Cupertino, California-based company shed $116 billion in market cap in a single session.
This plunge, the most severe since early August 2023, was triggered by a sell call from a Barclays analyst, Tim Long, who downgraded the iPhone maker from Equalweight to Underweight, while also lowering the price target from $161 to $160.
The other six tech titans — Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ:MSFT), Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) (NASDAQ:GOOGL), Amazon Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN), Meta Platforms Inc. (NASDAQ:META), NVIDIA Corp. (NASDAQ:NVDA) and Tesla, Inc. (NASDAQ:TSLA) — also saw their market caps decrease.
Magnificent Seven’s Plummet on 2024’s Opening Day
| Apple Inc. | $2,873.45B | -4.04% | $-116.04B |
| Microsoft Corporation | $2,749.90B | -1.61% | $-44.21B |
| NVIDIA Corporation | $1,183.60B | -3.24% | $-38.31B |
| Amazon.com, Inc. | $1,545.45B | -1.57% | $-24.31B |
| Meta Platforms, Inc. | $885.38B | -2.67% | $-23.60B |
| Alphabet Inc. | $1,733.85B | -1.23% | $-21.35B |
| Tesla, Inc. | $785.51B | -0.56% | $-4.36B |
The Magnificent Seven had an impressive rally in 2023: Their equal-weighted index delivered a 110% performance, setting new all-time highs.
However, traders seem to have adopted a more conservative stance at the onset of 2024, especially after the robust rally in the last two months of the 2023 year.
This downturn wasn’t confined to the Magnificent Seven alone. The broader tech sector also felt the impact, with the Invesco QQQ Trust (NASDAQ:QQQ), which tracks the Nasdaq 100 index, falling by 2.2%.
Fed Rate Cuts And Geopolitical Risks
The market, which was previously buoyed by optimism around anticipated Fed rate cuts — with a 90% probability of a cut as early as March and five more by the end of December — is now pausing to reflect on ongoing economic and geopolitical risks.Recent weeks have seen heightened tensions in global trade, especially in the Red Sea region. Iran-backed Houthi rebel attacks on commercial ships have forced major maritime shipping lines to reroute, avoiding the Gulf of Aden and the Suez Canal, leading to increased shipping times and costs.
Further affecting the tech landscape, European chipmaker giant ASML Holdings N.V. complied with a White House request to halt shipments of some machines to China, weeks before export bans on high-end chip making equipment were to take effect.
This move has sent ripples through the semiconductor industry, already off to a rocky start in 2024, with the iShares Semiconductor ETF (NYSE:SOXX) falling 4%.
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