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Ask HN: What do HN users feel about the downfall of tech stocks?
There are lot of speculations around economic crisis given tech stocks are in down fall and some companies started talking about reduced hiring ( FB, Uber).
- s1artibartfast 4y agoAs an aside, it'll be interesting if the people pushing for taxing unrealized gains well now push for tax deductions on unrealized losses. Less sarcastically, I think it means this tax proposal is DOA
- sparky_ 4y agoDepressed, scared and yet optimistic over the long (5+ year) term.
- PaulHoule 4y agoStocks go up, stocks go down.
- ftyers 4y agoCan't explain that...
- PaulHoule 4y agoIsn't much to explain. It's the way it is and it conditions how I feel about it. Normal people think "risk" is you buy a stock and then it get announced some Friday evening after the market closes that the CEO was a crook. It opens on Monday at 7% at what it was worth Friday and it is down from there. That kind of risk revolves around the fear of some distinct event. Hedge fund people think that "risk" is something like Brownian motion that has an upward bias in terms of return. The whole reason you buy stocks is because you want to get exposed to that "risk" so you get the reward that comes with it. If the stock goes up 3x tomorrow that is "risk" too, particularly if you are shorting it! https://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/09/28/market-fluctuate/ https://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/09/28/market-fluctuate/
- cercatrova 4y agoThey're referencing a meme: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/bill-oreilly-you-cant-explain-that https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/bill-oreilly-you-cant-explain...
- PaulHoule 4y agoI am writing a sci-fi story about some astronauts who visit a planet that used to have intelligent life that invented memes... Then the planet still had life but no intelligence.
- cercatrova 4y agoThe plot seems unrealistic then, based on human history, at least as portrayed through the book Sapiens. The author notes that it is through the memetic exchange of ideas that we created civilizations and took over the planet.
- PaulHoule 4y agoTo be specific I'm talking about those image memes. "Memes" as an explanation for the collective software of the human species is not such a bad idea. Here is some art, music and poetry by Burroughs and Anderson: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KvOoR8m0oms https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KvOoR8m0oms
- greenie_beans 4y agomemes are great. it's cool how memes create their own symbols and shift language and communication. i'm no linguist and know nothing about the field, but it's like memes create their own symbols to explain things/are derivative of other memes, and you've gotta be able to speak the language to understand it. it's like watching evolution in real time.
- reducesuffering 4y agoIt's origin is because Bill O'Reilly's explanation for why God exists is because the tide goes in and out like clockwork, and can't be explained? JFC
- kradeelav 4y agoWe're entering an almost-certain recession. It's just common sense that the more fragile/risky/not tied to physical products stocks would be hit hard.
- khaledh 4y agoIt's happening.
- s1artibartfast 4y agoValidated. Started to question my sanity seeing PEs sitting over 40, 50, or 80. That said, having just bought a BA house, I'm mentally preparing to ride a long downswing or stagnation in home value. It will be interesting to see how much inflation softens the blow for real assets. I'm not aiming to make any tech stock value plays, but watching physical goods manufacturers
- codingdave 4y agoWe've been in a bubble for a long time. So now it pops. Companies that never had a solid business model underlying their work will pop with it. The rest will tighten their belts for a while, and we all will recover over time. This will be the 3rd time through an industry low point in my career. Most people will get through it. Some will retire, some change industries. As long as society itself does not collapse, we'll all get through it. (And if it does collapse, we'll have bigger fish to fry.)
- TrackerFF 4y agoHigher interest rates would mean less risky investments, so let's see how the most debt-fueled startups are going to navigate the next rounds.
- mattbrewsbytes 4y agoOver last 6 months, NASDAQ is down ~28%, S&P 500 is down ~15%. Its not just tech stocks. Typical knee-jerk reactions by publicly traded companies is to restrict hiring, restrict admin spending and possibly have layoffs. There are some companies posting positive quarterly results and their stock still moves down so this downturn isn't really something a company can do anything about. If employees are sitting on a bunch of grants/options there is a chance they might be worthless depending on how they're awarded. I suspect the few trillion dollars pumped into the economy the last couple years is catching up with itself. At end of Q2 if GDP is down/slowed then I think someone will use whatever official wording they use for downfall/recession/slump/correction. And people will go "gee really?!?"
- Kalanos 4y agoyeah it's dragging everything down. Okta's YOY revenue increased 50%, but it dropped from $240 to $85
- s1artibartfast 4y agoOkta would need 2 billion annual profit to justify $240 with a PE of 20. Total revenue today is 1.3 billion, with a profit margin of -60% which is getting worse and not better. Can they 20x their revenue and cut costs by 50%?
- moralestapia 4y ago>Can they 20x their revenue and cut costs by 50%? Nope, their own MAUs plateaued already.
- Kalanos 4y agowhy do they need 25B in revenue?
- Kalanos 4y agoall they need to do is figure out how to cut costs. assuming that customer acquisition cost was a main driver then that should be easy
- silisili 4y agoMixed feelings. It was a long time coming - the market was obviously way overvalued given historical trends. In that regard, I'm happy to return to some normalcy. On the other hand, this usually ends in a lot of layoffs, and I'm not exactly thrilled at that prospect.
- crate_barre 4y ago
- kixiQu 4y agoIrritated, because my comp was set a long time ago and involves RSUs? Otherwise, my feeling is that this entire industry is ridiculously bubbly and "the stock market is just a graph of rich guys' feelings", money isn't real, etc. etc.
- VirusNewbie 4y agoI imagine YC companies (and similar startups) are salivating right now at the thought of RSU packages dropping like rocks. It is very hard for small startups to offer something comparable to 200k salary and 200k a year in RSUs. But if those packages are now worth 200/70, maybe a salary of 200k and stock options that might be worth a couple million look more more appealing, especially if someone is tired of a big company. I have a few friends who have expressed this. They wanted to leave the bigcos, but felt like they couldn't because of the money they'd be walking away from. Now they said they're looking at fun startups since their Bigco stock grant is worth so much less.
- reureu 4y agoBut that potential upside of a couple million is now facing a downside of the company not being able to raise their next round and facing layoffs on a 6-18 month runway. I always thought that economic downturns meant people race to the big companies for more security? Of course, if you were already pulling 200/200 from a big company, you might have already banked enough of a nest egg to feel comfortable with the risk of startups.
- VirusNewbie 4y agoGood points, but I think it entirely depends on the company’s runway and revenue. Companies that are making money hand over fist don’t have much to worry about, and startups that just raised and don’t have to raise again for two or three years are probably fine as well (as in, no more risky than any other time to join that early stage company)
- kylehotchkiss 4y agoThere’s just a lot going on in the world right now - Russia’s invasion in one corner, china’s lockdowns in the other. Both hit pretty much as the emergency phase of the pandemic ended which is making recovery even harder. As a side effect of both, we have rising fuel prices and probably worse supply chain crunches coming our way. Don’t forget rate hikes and all the news about water shortages in the southwest! I’m hoping later this year we start to get some breaks in the news cycles and see market recovery. Sentiment matters. Apple will still continue to innovate, Cloudflare’s launched a bunch of cool new stuff this week, lots of cool EV companies in the pipeline. The market will reflect this all sometime hopefully soon!
- nebula8804 4y agoSounds like a buying opportunity.
- cannaceo 4y agoIt will be...in about a year and a half. Until then, more bloodshed.
- tough 4y agosources or something? Like waiting a year and a half sounds hard, where's the bottom to this lol
- ars 4y agoIt could also just stay flat, and not go up or down for years.
- Kkoala 4y ago- "Number one rule of Wall Street. Nobody - and I don't care if you're Warren Buffet or if you're Jimmy Buffet - nobody knows if a stock is going to go up, down, sideways or in circles. You know what a fugazi is?" - "Fugayzi, it's a fake." - "Fugayzi, fugazi. It's a whazy. It's a woozie. It's fairy dust. It doesn't exist. It's never landed. It is no matter. It's not on the elemental chart. It's not fucking real."
- pigtailgirl 4y agodoubled down on cloudflare at $150 - three guesses how I feel -
- llampx 4y agoI know that depression callers are a dime a dozen, but I follow someone who's been extremely prescient from the 2020 correction, their team was calling for 4000+ as the S&P was hitting 2200, and they are calling for a big bear market once we hit 5500. So the tech stock sculling didn't take them by surprise but they're looking for a big correction starting fairly soon.
- effnorwood 4y ago
- zucked 4y agoGood riddance. If you survived on cheap cash burn and never bothered to shore up the fundamentals, well, the free ride is over now, kiddos.
- spicyusername 4y agoI'm more concerned about the housing market than the stock market. The drop in inflated securities prices seems like its just the business cycle doing its thing. Take a look at the Wall St. Cheat Sheet. We're still at the Denial / Panic phase, but we'll get to the Anger / Depression phase in time. Its a bit surprising to me there hasn't been _more_ tumult, given all that has been happening in the world the past few years.
- rchaud 4y agoAgreed. The tech selloff hurts most for those whose compensation is tied to the stock prices of these companies. Everyone else is worried about Main St stuff: housing, food, education and healthcare costs.
- donsupreme 4y agoHonestly, overall comp for both SWE and DS especially has been inflated by the FAANG. Deep down we all know $400-600K overall comp is not sustainable, for the same amount of work that people did just a decade ago for $150-250K range.
- throitallaway 4y agoThis exact same comment could be made about the price of housing, except it's even more out of whack than salaries.
- lunatuna 4y agoI would think so too, but I'm not sure where this is all going. There was never enough people 20 years ago, there is a lot more people needed now and the whole tech space seems pretty poor at growing talent. This seems to be creating a pricing at the margins issue by the deep pockets out there. Maybe the drop is going add more people onto the market, but I'm not seeing it yet.
- b20000 4y agocompensation is a result of cost of living, inflation, rising cost of everything etc etc. so what you are saying makes no sense.
- kdnvk 4y agothe cost of everything has not risen >200%
- b20000 4y agorent went from 2k to 4k+ and that is just one item
- pjmorris 4y ago> compensation is a result of cost of living, inflation, rising cost of everything etc etc. so what you are saying makes no sense. reply If that were true, everyone's compensation would've doubled or so in the last decade, but that phenomenon is mostly restricted to big/SV tech.
- mateo411 4y agoI feel poorer.
- rootsudo 4y agoGreat buying opportunity - good companies like MSFT and Apple are great buys - but with Caravana in the red 93% and firing so much staff, it may be the time where the market corrects and the auto note loan business is going to lead to alot of underwater cars. Then housing, with same, zillow and open door signalled this a month or two ago - and the Fed hiking up the interest rate, and bitcoin hitting 28k. Fun times and it'd be a Fun Friday Close.
- seydor 4y agoi dont know if it means anything - the tech didnt go away what happened was tech was wildly profitable and became overvalued. tons of capital is invested in US tech stocks thats why compensations are through the roof. but the stock inflation did not reflect technological progress, but rather too much capital, both printed us dollars and foreign capital (europe has no tech sector worth investing in sadly). Companies seemed to care more about making bank from an IPO than making actual money. That is going to change now, and we ll have to see some actual moneymaking tech. It's also been at least 10 years now that HN is all about bloated frameworks that make tech dumb-proof but not more capable. i hope this will end now as well
- nunez 4y agoMy retirement accounts love the sale!
- t-3 4y agoGlad the only tech stock I'm holding is Intel.