Talk about a cold shower! We opened 2024 with a tech stock sell-off across the board, as investors retreated from the go-go days of the past two months. The Nasdaq Composite Index, for instance, fell 1.6%. Among the biggest losers was Apple, everybody’s favorite stock, which fell 3.6% after an analyst at Barclays put out a bearish report on the company, according to this Bloomberg report. That’s one way for an analyst to get headlines.
It wouldn’t be a big surprise if investor sentiment was finally turning more negative toward Apple. After all, its growth has all but disappeared lately as the smartphone market has stagnated. Company revenue shrank in the year to September, and analysts project it will increase only 3.6% in the current fiscal year, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence. Longer term, there are questions about Apple’s ability to compete with artificial intelligence–powered hardware, potentially from companies such as Microsoft. (See our 2024 predictions from Friday on that subject.) What’s more, regulatory actions could hurt Apple’s services business, one of its main sources of growth lately, as the Financial Times noted today. Investors have already taken notice: In 2023, Apple’s stock gains trailed those of other big tech firms.
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