Tech giants, including Apple, take a big plunge on the stock market

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Apple waives developer fees for nonprofits, others in 8 additional countries
Apple is on track to hit $1 trillion valuation this year.
Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac

Tech stocks are dominating right now, but they got a bit of a wakeup call yesterday. Apple included.

According to a new report, a plethora of tech giants — inlcuding Apple, Alibaba, Amazon, Baidu, Facebook, Google, Netflix, Nvidia, Tesla and Twitter — all suffered falls yesterday. It was the worst drop in the NYSE FANG+ Index, which tracks global tech giants, since it was established four years ago.

Right now, the tech sector represents by far the biggest chunk of the S&P 500, the American stock market index based on the market capitalizations of 500 large companies with common stock listed on the NYSE or NASDAQ. In total, the tech sector represents 26.8 percent of the S&P 500, with the next highest sector being finance with 16.8 percent.

The overall tech value drop was 5.6 percent on Tuesday, worrying investors that the tech sector, dominated by tech giants, may be reaching some kind of tipping point. At time of writing, AAPL is trading down 1.54 percent at $165.75.

The race to hit $1 trillion

Much of the concern is likely related to the talk of possible regulation among companies like Facebook. While Apple is unlikely to be quite so affected, given its pro-privacy stance, it’s easy to see why investors might be rattled.

Apple’s stock price has risen a respectable 24 percent over the past year. That’s impressive, but it’s nothing compared to Amazon, which has soared by 83 percent during the same period of time. Alphabet, the Google parent company with a market cap of $783 billion, has seen its stock rise by 33 percent.

Should these trajectories continue, Amazon will beat Apple by one week to become the world’s first $1 trillion company this summer. Provided nothing happens before then, of course!

Source: WSJ

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