FANG, the acronym for tech giants Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, and Google (Alphabet), has lost some of its market performance prowess, according to experts. Collectively the group is down nearly half a trillion dollars in market value since each stock’s 52-week high. Google has been the biggest decliner, decaying $173 billion since April.
TradingAnalysis.com founder Todd Gordon on Thursday called the group “dead money.” Displaying a chart of the NYSE FANG+ Index, which follows the four FANG stock tech behemoths, along with other major tech players like Apple, and Tesla, Gordon stated that it “hasn’t participated on the upside” as much as investors might desire.
“The one stock that could kind of surface as strong here is Netflix,” he said on CNBC’s “Trading Nation.” “You’re definitely seeing a little bit of relative strength. There’s a pretty good air pocket right there between FANG and Netflix.”
Gordon isn’t the only analyst who is expressing doubts about FANG’s upside potential. John Petrides, managing director and portfolio manager at Point View Wealth Management, isn’t as bullish on FANG stocks either.
“From a fundamental standpoint, Netflix is the least attractive,” he said in the “Trading Nation” interview. “We all know about Disney, AT&T and Time Warner, and all the other streaming services coming to the market. Netflix has to spend a lot of money to generate original content, and I just don’t think that that bear case is truly priced into the stock.”
As for the rest of FANG, index fund investors should hope the tech juggernauts are able to turn, Petrides said.
Interestingly, veteran fund manager Larry Glazer, Mayflower Advisors managing partner, had a similar feeling about FANG’s decline last year.
These so-called FANG [Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, Google] stocks are “not the U.S. economy,” Glazer said. “Investors need to make that distinction. They don’t want to hear it.”
“It’s not so much that we can’t be bullish on the broad U.S. economy because when you look at jobless data, it’s really strong. You look at GDP, it’s strong. Consumer confidence [is at a]multi-decade high. All of those things are really bullish,” he said. “It’s really more a matter of the leadership of the market changing.”
“You are starting to see emerging markets coming back. So, that global story is intact. The divergence is dissipating. That’s what you really want to see to see the market go higher, ” Glazer added.
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