Us stocks suffered a Waterloo in August, with tech giants such as Apple losing more than $600 billion in market value
CTOnews.com August 27 news, August, U.S. stock market performance weak, some of the world's largest technology companies lost hundreds of billions of dollars in market value.
According to Insider's calculations, Apple, Microsoft, Tesla and Meta have lost a total of $625 billion so far this month (CTOnews.com notes: currently about 4.56 trillion yuan). Among them, Apple's market value fell by $314 billion, followed by Tesla's $117 billion, Microsoft's $114 billion and Meta's $80 billion.
This is in stark contrast to the overall strength of the stock market this year, especially technology stocks, which have been driven by the artificial intelligence boom. Even after falling nearly 5% in August, the S & P 500 is still up 14% this year.
Apple shares are down 10 percent this month, Microsoft is down 4.6 percent, Tesla and Meta are down nearly 13 percent each.
Much of the stock price decline may be due to seasonal factors, with historical data showing August as the second-worst month for stocks in more than 30 years. In addition, rising interest rates and soaring bond yields have also put pressure on equities, reducing the relative attractiveness of this asset class. High borrowing costs tend to erode a company's profitability, making its stock less attractive, while increased bond yields offer investors lower-risk, higher-return options. Bond yields have been climbing over the past few quarters as the Fed has sharply raised interest rates to curb inflation.
Other factors have also weighed on tech stocks in recent months. For Apple, the lackluster results showed iPhone and iPad sales falling amid slowing U.S. consumer spending. For Tesla, investors are increasingly concerned that a series of price cuts introduced by the automaker this year could hurt its profit margins.
While Microsoft, Tesla, Apple and Meta all took a hit this month, one tech company bucked the trend notably: Nvidia. The semiconductor company, known for its GPU chips, has had an excellent year, with its second-quarter results showing revenue growth of 101% year-over-year.
