Testosterone Pit
The last two times when margin debt reversed and fell after a record-breaking spike, all hell broke loose. In 2000, it was simultaneous. In 2007, it was delayed by a few months. Today, on the surface, everything is still hunky-dory. The Dow is just fractions below its all-time high that it set on Wednesday. But beneath the surface, parts of the stock market are already coming unglued, and holders of momentum stocks have been eviscerated.
The Nasdaq Biotech Index had beautifully shot up along an exponential curve. Then the hot air hissed out of it, and it swooned 21% in six weeks. The index includes big players, like Biogen, not just startups with big dreams and no drugs. After some buying on the dip, the index closed on Thursday down "only" 15%. But that hasn’t saved smaller momentum stocks: Exelixis is down 58% from its 52-week high and 92% from its all-time high shortly after its IPO in early 2000; Halozyme is down 60% from its high in early January. And so on.
In the social media space, the bloodletting has been ugly. The Social Media ETF SOCL is down 23%, but stronger stocks like Facebook (down 16% from its high a month ago) paper over individual fiascos, like Twitter, which has plummeted 48% from its peak last year to below its IPO price.
Other momentum stocks are getting annihilated: Amazon down 25% since January, Netflix down 27% in just two months. From their peaks, Pandora crashed 39%, Gogo 63%, and Imperva, a Big Data security outfit, 65%.
Then there’s the “Cloud,” the single most hyped miracle-sector last year. Escalator up, elevator down. Workday, which sells cloud-based corporate software, went public in late 2012 and soared. Two months ago, it sprung a leak and the hot air hissed out of it. It’s down 36%. Veeve, which sells cloud-based healthcare software, has crashed 60% from its November high, shortly after it had gone public. Salesforce is down 22%. ServiceNow lost 30% over the past two weeks. LinkedIn reported a loss after hours on Thursday and got hammered. It’s now down 40% from its peak last September. Jive Software is down 71% from its high in 2012.
They aren’t just outliers. They’re included in the index of 37 publicly traded cloud companies that VC firm Bessemer Venture Partners put together and updates on a weekly basis. From the beginning of the data series in January 2012 to February 27, 2014, the index had soared 129%. But in the two months since then, the index gave up more than half of its gains and lost $58 billion in market cap!
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The last two times when margin debt reversed and fell after a record-breaking spike, all hell broke loose. In 2000, it was simultaneous. In 2007, it was delayed by a few months. Today, on the surface, everything is still hunky-dory. The Dow is just fractions below its all-time high that it set on Wednesday. But beneath the surface, parts of the stock market are already coming unglued, and holders of momentum stocks have been eviscerated.
The Nasdaq Biotech Index had beautifully shot up along an exponential curve. Then the hot air hissed out of it, and it swooned 21% in six weeks. The index includes big players, like Biogen, not just startups with big dreams and no drugs. After some buying on the dip, the index closed on Thursday down "only" 15%. But that hasn’t saved smaller momentum stocks: Exelixis is down 58% from its 52-week high and 92% from its all-time high shortly after its IPO in early 2000; Halozyme is down 60% from its high in early January. And so on.
In the social media space, the bloodletting has been ugly. The Social Media ETF SOCL is down 23%, but stronger stocks like Facebook (down 16% from its high a month ago) paper over individual fiascos, like Twitter, which has plummeted 48% from its peak last year to below its IPO price.
Other momentum stocks are getting annihilated: Amazon down 25% since January, Netflix down 27% in just two months. From their peaks, Pandora crashed 39%, Gogo 63%, and Imperva, a Big Data security outfit, 65%.
Then there’s the “Cloud,” the single most hyped miracle-sector last year. Escalator up, elevator down. Workday, which sells cloud-based corporate software, went public in late 2012 and soared. Two months ago, it sprung a leak and the hot air hissed out of it. It’s down 36%. Veeve, which sells cloud-based healthcare software, has crashed 60% from its November high, shortly after it had gone public. Salesforce is down 22%. ServiceNow lost 30% over the past two weeks. LinkedIn reported a loss after hours on Thursday and got hammered. It’s now down 40% from its peak last September. Jive Software is down 71% from its high in 2012.
They aren’t just outliers. They’re included in the index of 37 publicly traded cloud companies that VC firm Bessemer Venture Partners put together and updates on a weekly basis. From the beginning of the data series in January 2012 to February 27, 2014, the index had soared 129%. But in the two months since then, the index gave up more than half of its gains and lost $58 billion in market cap!
Read more
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