Here Are The Biggest Risks Facing Tech

Obviously, regulatory risk has grabbed the spotlight in tech of late.

I’ve written so much about this over the past two months I’m having a hard time going back and digging up all of the posts, but here are a couple of notables, with the last one documenting the bloodbath that unfolded in the sector on March 27:

This debate is obviously crucial for the market going forward. Everyone is acutely aware of how important it is for tech high-fliers to avoid an Icarus moment until we finally see the fabled “rotation” back into value or, more simply, until another sector proves it’s capable of taking the baton in this aging bull market.

And I mean look, usually by the weekend I’m running low on patience and my sense of humor has been slowly beaten into submission by the manic news cycle, so allow me to just to say in a very dispassionate way that investing is not as simple as saying “this is what people seem to like now in terms of gadgets and websites, so I’ll just buy those stocks and nothing could possibly go wrong.” Remember, there was a time when people couldn’t pry themselves away from their BlackBerries. So you know, anyone offering to invest your money for you based on a “strategy” that involves uncritically buying FAAMG is either a charlatan, a moron, or more likely, both.

Over the past month, we’ve seen what can go wrong with these companies. The bottom line is this: s#*# happens. And it’s not always fair.

It’s not at all desirable, for instance, for the President of the United States to be bullying Amazon around on Twitter. But look, if it wasn’t Trump it was going to be someone else because as I explained last month, anyone who thinks Jeff Bezos is going to be able to keep doing what he’s doing without hitting a bunch of roadblocks along the way is delusional: