To The Moon

Alphabet’s stock suffers worst daily selloff in more than three years

Alphabet shed more market capitalization Wednesday than it had in any single day prior.

The selloff in Alphabet Inc. shares Wednesday resulted in the fifth-largest one-day decline in market value for any U.S. company on record.

Alphabet’s stock fell 9.5% in Wednesday’s action, wiping out $166.64 billion in market value for the Google parent company, according to Dow Jones Market Data. The decline in market cap is the largest one-day loss for Alphabet on record, though Meta Platforms Inc., Amazon.com Inc., Apple Inc. and Microsoft Corp. all suffered worse losses in the past.

The company’s daily drop in valuation is more than the entire market capitalizations of each of Nike Inc., Advanced Micro Devices Inc. and Walt Disney Co.

The 9.5% fall in Alphabet Class A shares Wednesday made for their worst single-day percentage decline since March 16, 2020, when they shed 11.6%.

The decline also marked the worst post-earnings one-day percentage decline for the Class A shares since July 18, 2008, when they dropped 9.8%, according to Dow Jones Market Data.

Alphabet late Tuesday beat overall revenue and earnings expectations, though the cloud-computing business underwhelmed and analysts left feeling less upbeat about the company’s margin potential going forward.

“Expectations were high heading into GOOG results, and while the top-line delivered in the most important areas, we wouldn’t be surprised if investors rotate a bit into other mega cap tech names near-term,” Barclays analyst Ross Sandler wrote following Tuesday afternoon’s earnings report.