Forget the steep losses — tech’s back in business
Quarter ends with a bullish bounce in dramatic rebound
SAN FRANCISCO After starting the year with a painful 15% correction that looked headed for bear market territory, technology stocks staged a dramatic comeback during the last six weeks.
Twenty-two of the 30 tech firms with the richest market caps saw their shares rise during the quarter.
The rebound came as the Nasdaq clawed nearly all the way back from its mid-February lows to finish the first quarter down 2.5%.
The bullish bounce provided yet more evidence of the wisdom in the old trader’s maxim “buy when everyone else is selling.”
The stars of the quarter were mostly established companies that have been public for decades.
Telecom firms AT&T and Verizon posted double-digit share price gains as tech investors headed for safety.
So did Yahoo, Oracle and chip-equipment maker Applied Materials.
Along with Verizon, the best tech stocks of the quarter among the 50 most valuable were Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing and the newly spun-out Hewlett Packard Enterprise.
The largest firms that make up much of the Nasdaq’s index weight — Apple, Alphabet and Microsoft — had a mixed quarter and were not among the leaders.
Apple rose 4%, Alphabet fell 2%, and Microsoft shares ended the quarter roughly flat.
Facebook, the fourth-most valuable tech firm, climbed 9% on surging revenue growth and better-than-expected fourth-quarter financial results.
Amazon, however, the second-best large-cap tech stock last year, faltered badly.
It fell 12%, by far the worst performance among the five most valuable tech firms.
And in a continuing demonstration of why there’s been an arbitrage trade on VMware and its parent company, EMC, since October, the former dropped 7.5% while the latter rose 4%.
The worst of the laggards were two former high-flying Internet companies: Twitter plunged 29% and LinkedIn got crushed, losing almost half its value.