, host of Mad Money on US television channel CNBC – survived Google’s corporate name-change to Alphabet, though FANG became FAANG when Apple could no longer be ignored, the original “A” being Amazon.
FAANG wasn’t perfect either, as it excluded an obvious growth stock like Microsoft. Alternative acronyms, including the dire FANMAG, then did the rounds alongside more sober journalistic descriptions like mega-cap stocks, until Facebook changed its name to Meta and the more modest-sized Netflix started to look like a toddler who had been lumped in with the big boys.
Last October Cramer proposed MAMAA stocks, excluding Netflix, but the term has conspicuously failed to take off, mainly because it sounds rubbish.These mega-caps are clearly in a more secure position than pandemic flirtations such as Zoom, Peloton and Etsy that hit a hot streak during the lockdown economy but are now sweating heavily as investors dump them like paper masks.
Between the elite and the pandemic unravellers, however, there are many other tech and media companies feeling itchy as ever louder warnings of economic calamity amplify their own vulnerabilities. Since reaching a vertiginous $700.99 along with the market peak in November 2021, Netflix has lost almost three-quarters of its value, with its stock plunging 35 per cent on a single day in April after it reported its first net loss of subscribers in more than a decade. The doomsday narrative this sparked seemed overdone on one level, but there is no denying that Netflix’s bid to recapture lost momentum is much tougher considering consumers worldwide are being whacked by inflation.