The huge drop, erasing over US$200 billion from Meta's market capitalisation and around US$29 billion from Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg's net worth, spilled over to the broader technology sector and dragged the Nasdaq Composite Index lower. It was the biggest slide in market value for a US public company, according to a Reuters analysis of Refinitiv data.
"The tech selloff spilled over to broader equity markets this morning and with the Fed preparing to raise interest rates, we could see more volatility going forward," he said. It was also a popular stock for retail investors, who appeared to be enthusiastically buying the dip. The stock's drop was in addition a boon for investors betting on a decline in the company's shares. Short sellers in Meta were poised to increase their potential 2022 gains to more than $2 billion with Thursday's plunge, according to S3 Partners.
Meta reported a decline in daily active users from the previous quarter for the first time as competition with rivals like TikTok, the video sharing platform owned by China's ByteDance, heats up.