Amid the ongoing Facebook drama, shares of Facebook Inc. (NASDAQ: FB) took a nosedive after the social media giant came under siege for data-sharing. The company remains under fire for its connection with Cambridge Analytica, a data mining company, that obtained information on more than 50 million of its users without permission.
Some ETFs with large exposure to Mark Zuckerberg’s company are weathering the storm. For example, investors are remaining dedicated to the Global X Social Media ETF (NASDAQ: SOCL).
SOCL “tracks a market-cap weighted index of social media companies. Facebook Inc. is its third largest holding, constituting 8.3 percent of the portfolio. The fund’s taken in almost $27 million in March, putting it on pace for its best month since September 2016,” reports Bloomberg.
Getting Social With SOCL
The $236.4 million SOCL, which debuted in November 2011 as the first dedicated social media ETF, tracks the Solactive Social Media Total Return Index. Twitter Inc. (NYSE: TWTR) and China’s Tencent Holdings (OTC: TCEHY) combine for nearly a quarter of the fund’s weight. Other familiar names among SOCL’s top 10 holdings include Snap Inc. (NYSE: SNAP) and Google parent Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOGL).
“SOCL fell 3.6 percent over the three sessions from last Friday to Tuesday, weighed down by Facebook as well as Snap Inc. and Twitter Inc. But the fund has regained nearly a third of that loss Wednesday, as social media stocks recovered,” according to Bloomberg.
Facebook’s 10% fall Monday from their all time high Feb. 1 helped drag the Nasdaq to close only slightly above the line. Facebook fell 5.7% on Tuesday. A report from The Verge said that Facebook has scheduled a meeting for all employees Tuesday to let them ask questions about the Cambridge Analytica data privacy scandal.
SOCL’s relative steadiness in the face of the Facebook controversy underscores the advantages of using a basket approach to social media stocks rather picking individual names. The ETF held 32 stocks at the end of last year.
Year-to-date investors have added nearly $40 million to SOCL as of March 21st.
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