Once upon a time, the acronym FANG (for Facebook, Apple, Netflix and Google) was the symbol for tech stocks. But almost unnoticed, Broadcom snuck into the club of trillion-dollar companies, and now there is a new acronym: BATMMAAN (Broadcom, Apple, Tesla, Microsoft, Meta, Amazon, Alphabet, Nvidia). Barron's came out with an excellent analysis including a price comparison. What does it show? Nvidia is the cheapest stock of the bunch.
Forget FANG, here's BATMMAAN
This is especially noteworthy since Nvidia was already by far the best-performing stock among the tech giants over the last year. Propelled by the AI hype, Broadcom (symbol AVGO) is also coming on strong, while Tesla is mostly driven by members of Elon Musk's cult.
The entire BATMMAAN club made an average return of 66% last year. In fact, Apple and especially Microsoft are doing substantially worse than the S&P 500, which has proven to be a solid investment at 25%. Both icons are suffering from the AI hype: Apple because it derives no identifiable revenue or profit benefit from AI and Microsoft because it is making tens of billions in additional investments in AI, the long-term returns of which investors doubt.
Return of top cryptocurrencies: 174%
Investors with a strong stomach have had a wonderful year in the crypto world, where the average rise of the largest crypto currencies measured by market cap, has been a whopping 174%.
In addition to the rise of memecoin Dogecoin, carried in part by Doge fan Elon Musk, it is particularly notable that XRP, a Stone Age token by crypto standards, rose over 450%. Trump's upcoming presidency ensures that a new SEC boss will be appointed, following notorious cryptohater Gensler. The hope of XRP holders is that under the new administration, the SEC will end the ongoing legal proceedings against XRP.