Big Tech is so yesterday. Prices peaked last year, but there are limited reasons to expect they will ever become so dominant again. They are too big, under the regulatory cosh, and increasingly under competitive pressure. They are heading the same way as the dinosaurs.
Markets love drama… from the next corupto-coin exchange to collapse, rising interest rate threats, and riots in China in the face of a Covid meltdown. But drama and reality seldom coincide – events are more prosaic!
Big Tech “growth” stocks suffered a price-check this week as economic reality bit, but they face much more pressure than just short-term cost and sales problems. Long-Term, new businesses and opportunities are evolving to eat their lunch, and leave them behind.
Stock markets feel like they are running out of momentum – but that should not lead to fears of a no-see-um crash, rather a more fundamental assessment of the reasons why? In the UK, Plan B – National Economic Suicide by winter Lockdowns – looks on the cards. And, despite all the wonders of Big Tech and promises about how much better it makes our lives – most of it is pretty pants.
Highlight event today is Apple launching new bright-shiny-things. Apple is unique – it has a monopoly of being Apple! For how long?
Yesterday’s events across Tech served to remind us it’s a fluid sector where what we believe one day may be false the next, but deep down there is bedrock. Crypto currencies saw a last-chance bubble pop, while Tesla genuinely surprised me by producing solid results – which don’t for one moment change my perspective its fatally overvalued. Meanwhile, the latest China clampdown on listed stocks shocked markets, but reminds us we need to think differently about the wakening Dragon.
An open letter congratulating the CEO of Virgin Media, Lutz Schueler for perfecting the art of completely ignoring customers.
Markets are fretting. Up one day and down the next? Do they believe in the dire fundamentals or inflation threat, or keep buying Central Banks juicing the markets? Never mind; hot disruptive tech stocks can only ever go up… But where do they eventually lead us? I suspect Tech will eventually kill us all…
We had a slew of spectacular Big Tech results this week, but has the time come to regulate them more closely to avoid increasingly monopolistic behaviour, and to protect the population from the pernicious effect of the manipulation of big data? It’s as much an argument about the role of the state as it is about the success of companies. There will be winners and losers.
