Technology stocks sank Thursday, but some members of the "Magnificent Seven" were punished more than others as the group collectively shed $1 trillion in market capitalization.
That was the largest one-day loss of valuation on record for the group, according to Dow Jones Market Data - easily eclipsing the $758.7 billion previous record set on March 10. Apple Inc. $(AAPL)$ itself also saw a record market-cap drop, amounting to $311 billion.
From a stock perspective, Apple was the biggest loser, with shares falling 9.3%. Investors are worried about the company's overseas production. Apple manufactures iPhones and other products in China, and while it has expanded production into other countries such as India and Vietnam, those are also subject to the stiff tariffs announced by President Donald Trump on Wednesday.
"The simple thought is likely that Apple's products will be subject to this tariff, and thus demand will get hit and thus the supply chain will suffer," Jefferies analyst Edison Lee wrote in a note to clients.
Investors now are left wondering whether the company will end up getting an exemption, as it did during Trump's first term. Lee noted that Apple recently announced a plan to invest $500 billion into the U.S., which could help it secure a similar reprieve this time around.
Shares of Amazon.com Inc. $(AMZN)$ saw a comparable decline, falling 9%. Baird's Colin Sebastian covers a host of internet and e-commerce companies, and he thinks Amazon could be among the most impacted by tariffs, with far-ranging effects that "would likely include advertising, enterprise tech spend and higher infrastructure costs, in addition to dot-com volumes."
Meta Platforms Inc.'s stock $(META)$ slid 9%, too, as the Facebook parent company - along with Alphabet Inc. $(GOOG)$ $(GOOGL)$ - "simply can't avoid the impact from pullback in ad spend, in addition to potentially higher infrastructure prices," according to Sebastian.
Meta's business, though, is more reliant on advertising than Alphabet's is, as Alphabet also has a sizable cloud-computing operation. That could explain why Alphabet's stock saw a relatively less severe reaction in Thursday action. Even so, Alphabet shares ended the day down 4%.
Meta also has benefited from advertising spending by Chinese e-commerce players Temu and Shein, which could lessen their presence in the U.S. as Trump moves to end the "de minimis" exemption that has allowed companies to make small shipments into the U.S. without those being subject to tariffs.
Nvidia Corp.'s stock $(NVDA)$ fell 7.8%, even though semiconductors were exempt from tariffs. But that doesn't tell the whole story, according to Wolfe Research analyst Chris Caso.
"The much more significant impact is, rather, the tariffs that will be imposed on finished goods containing semiconductors, most of which are exported from countries for which very high reciprocal tariffs will be applied, and there are no feasible alternatives for supply," he wrote.
Then there's Tesla Inc.'s stock $(TSLA)$, which declined 5.5%. While investors were already bracing for automotive tariffs, analysts at Deutsche Bank noted that "the scope of impact is larger." That's because the consumer "now needs to absorb potentially a barrage of tariffs beyond autos" and because the tariffs on non-U.S. content within cars seem to be steeper than investors originally thought.
That said, "Tesla and Ford $(F)$ appear to be relatively better positioned given their footprint and content-sourcing allocation," Deutsche Bank's Edison Yu wrote.
Meanwhile, Microsoft Corp.'s stock $(MSFT)$ was the most mild decliner of the bunch, dropping 2.4%. Microsoft does sell some hardware products, but software and the cloud are more important to the business, which could be why the stock didn't do as badly as its Big Tech peers.
"But when thinking about the tariffs from a software standpoint itsimply gets back to the impact on demand," Evercore ISI analyst Kirk Materne wrote. "And it's almost impossible to think that the uncertainty related to tariffs won't have a negative impact on near-term spending plans."
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