Last quarter, Facebook shocked the world by delivering an absolute bomb of an earnings report, causing the biggest market loss in technology stock history. That was just the beginning, though, as the stock is substantially lower than even back then. The gap sticks out like a sore thumb:
The question, of course, is: was this a one-time anomaly? Is Facebook actually rock-solid, and it just got a little jostled by the scandal surrounding it early this year?
My guess is the answer is “no” – – if you read much these days about social media, it seems Facebook is becoming increasingly yesterday’s news, and as you can see from the succession of horizontal lines I’ve drawn, it just keeps taking the elevator to the next floor down.
It was always this way, of course. For years and years, Facebook cruised right along, as reliable as a high-yield utility company in your portfolio (albeit a utility company that increased in value hundreds of percent). The moving averages were a steady stream of unbroken perfection.
We all know what happens when a technology falls out of favor, though. Look no further than one of Slope’s favorite whipping boys, SNAP, which apparently has as its principal product “Creating Capital Losses for Investors“. So well do I remember the news reports at the time SNAP came out. Millennial after millennial excitedly described how they were opening up their very first stock brokerage account so they could buy SNAP since “everybody” was using it. Uh-huh.
Taking a look at the spiffy new volatility data from SlopeCharts, you can see that things are actually fairly placid at the moment…..relatively speaking.
Press Ctrl-E in SlopeCharts, however, and all the earnings dates are revealed, including the next one. Thus, you know when the moment of truth is: so, will Halloween create some very easy-to-write headlines for financial journalists? I am guessing the answer is going to be “yes”.
