Displaying items by tag: google

(Washington)

Investors in tech have reason to worry. Not only is Trump saying that they should possibly be subjected to anti-trust regulation, but the tech sector is heading to Washington today to meet with the Senate. Top executives at Facebook, Google, and Twitter, are set to face questions and scrutiny about their practices, including on trust concerns, political content, and consumer privacy. The tide of public opinion has turned against tech over the last year, and congress has followed suit, with Senate GOP leader Orrin Hatch calling Google’s anti-trust behavior “disquieting” despite the fact that he used to staunchly defend the sector.

FINSUM: The big problem for tech is that a regulatory crackdown now seems to have bipartisan support. We think there will be some regulations imposed on tech, but the depth of the forthcoming rules will be the deciding factor. In other words, will it be something along the lines of GDPR (relatively light) or more like Glass-Steagal?

(New York)

The long-awaited (long-feared?) shake up of the S&P 500’s sectors will occur soon, and there is a lot of focus on how the tech sector, as traditionally defined, will change. Google and Facebook will be making the switch out of tech and into the new communications services sector. Netflix, as well as Walt Disney, Ford, and Nike will be joining them. There is some fear about the volatility that will be caused as big index trackers have to change their holdings on September 21st. Overall though, it seems like tech stocks (as traditionally thought of) will be winners, as having them distributed across multiple sectors will avoid the sector-weight limits many asset managers face.

FINSUM: Tech stocks will likely do well, but so will the companies getting grouped with them. As one analyst pointed out, AT&T and Verizon joining Google and Facebook is kind of liking outsiders getting invited to the cool kids’ party, which may help their share prices.

(San Francisco)

In what is a very odd and counterintuitive change, in just a matter of weeks, both Facebook and Google will be removed from the S&P 500’s “tech” sector. Indexes are changing up their alignments, and Google and Facebook, along with Netflix and Comcast, will all now move to a new group called “communications-services”. The changes are due to take place on September 28th and will force investors to trade in and out of billions of Dollars of holdings to realign their portfolios.

FINSUM: What this means is that the “tech” sector, and in factor no sector, will now be such a dominant component of the S&P 500. It may also reshape trading patterns, and according to some, boost volatility.

(San Francisco)

Remember all those privacy policy email updates you got over the last few weeks? Well in case you were not paying attention, they arrived because of a landmark change in the way the EU is governing data, and even US companies needed to comply if they had any European customers. Well, under the new rules, Google is already seen as the big winner, which we thought investors might like to know. Google has been able to get data use consent from users much more successfully than others, and in turn, it has been routing many of its ad customers to its own ad exchanges instead of those of vendors.

FINSUM: As was always going to be the case, it looks like the big tech powers will be able to use the new data regulations to their advantage. Theoretically this could be a boost to Google’s cash cow Adsense business.

(New York)

Markets have been falling in aggregate, but the real damage has been to the tech sector (and utilities to a lesser extent). Facebook, for instance, fell a whopping 6.8% yesterday on fears of fallout over its data breach. But Amazon, Netflix, and Google, all tumbled as well. Tech stocks have been such a leader for markets, and now amount to such a major percentage of indexes ($2.2 tn), that some are worried tech losses could rattle the whole market. Mounting fears over regulations seem to be weighing on the sector.

FINSUM: The odd thing is that it is not fears over tech businesses that are causing losses, but rather fears of regulation. We do absolutely believe big losses in tech could shake the confidence of the market as a whole.