Snap plunge keys tech ‘wreck’oning

Oh Snap!

Shares of Snapchat’s parent fell 43% on Tuesday after the disappearing-photos app sounded alarm bells about a slowing economy killing digital advertising revenue.

“The macroeconomic environment has deteriorated further and faster than anticipated,” Snap said in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing on Monday, adding that it’s expecting lower revenue and profit for the second quarter.

Companies generally pull back from advertising spending when the economy slows, translating to lower revenue for socialmedia firms like Snap that rely on ad dollars.

Snap’s SOS spooked investors across social media and the tech sector more broadly. Shares of Facebook and Instagram parent Meta plummeted 7.6% to $181.28, while Google parent Alphabet notched a 5% loss to trade around $2,119.40.

Pinterest, meanwhile, was down a whopping 23% at $17.30.

“Snap is a proxy for online advertising and when you see weakness there then you automatically think Facebook, Pinterest and Google,” said Dennis Dick, a trader at Bright Trading LLC in Las Vegas.

“Once you start thinking about Google, that’s when the markets starts to sell off.”

Roughly $100 billion in total was wiped off tech stocks Tuesday. The techheavy Nasdaq Composite Index was down 2.4%.

Snapchat was one of many tech stocks that ballooned during the pandemic, trading as high as $83 in September. But the company’s shares have plummeted more than 70% so far in 2022 and closed at $12.79 on Tuesday.

Snap’s struggles also dragged down shares of Twitter, which is battling with Elon Musk over his agreement to take over the company for $44 billion.