Meta is clinging to its 7% gain, as the only Big Tech stock that’s up this year

Tesla and Nvidia have led Big Tech lower, but Meta is holding on to some of its 2025 gains after a remarkable 20-day green streak earlier this year.

David Crowther

3/10/25 8:08AM

Last week, the Nasdaq Composite Index finally crossed into correction territory, having dropped more than 10% from its previous peak, as the AI trade reversal, tariff turmoil, and growing concerns about an economic slowdown weighed on markets. Collectively, Big Tech stocks have shed their postelection gains, with all of the BATMMAAN stocks now in the red for 2025... except for Meta.

Though Mark Zuckerberg’s company certainly hasn’t been immune to the sell-off, it still has some precious gains to hold onto, after a 20-day green streak earlier this year.

So why has Meta outperformed?

On the surface, it’s not immediately obvious why the company behind Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp managed to outpace its rivals so strongly in the first six weeks of this year. Like its peers, Meta is shelling out insane dollar sums on AI infrastructure, with plans to spend a whopping $65 billion this year, while its VR and AR division (Reality Labs) is still burning cash like there’s no tomorrow. With all of the usual caveats — we never really know why any stock does anything — here are a few possible reasons:

TikTok sale or ban: Though it’s taken a back seat after President Trump signed a 75-day delay via executive order, the potential sale/ban of one of Meta’s chief rivals for American doomscrolling could be propping up the stock. On Sunday, Trump said the US was talking to four different groups about the potential sale of TikTok.
The fundamentals: Meta crushed its earnings, posting Q4 revenue that was up 21% and net income that had risen 49%.
Tariffs: Companies like Amazon, Tesla, Apple, Nvidia, and Broadcom all sell more physical stuff and rely on complicated global supply chains, which could be impacted by the escalating US trade wars. Meta’s core money-spinner remains digital advertising, which might be indirectly affected — advertisers from China might be less likely to buy an Instagram ad if they face tariffs on any goods they sell, for example — but would potentially avoid the direct hit of escalating tariffs.
AI monetization road map: As my colleague Jon Keegan put it, this year is all about hitting a billion Meta AI users. Next year will be all about monetizing them.
Endless efficiency era: Zuckerberg has been ruthlessly focused on keeping his workforce lean, with the company reportedly planning to fire 5% of its workforce this year. Indeed, on a “profit-per-employee” metric, Meta ranked second behind Nvidia.
Political cover: After cozying up to the new administration, investors might be expecting a more favorable regualory landscape over the coming years — with Meta successfully stopping legislation “that would have regulated social media for the first time” in December 2024, per Politico.

Tasha Matsumoto

Large-caps waver ahead of next week’s Fed meeting; small-caps notch record close

Stocks are in a holding pattern as investors await tomorrow’s release of September PCE for further insight into next week’s Fed decision.

Luke Kawa8h

Report: US senators plan to introduce bill blocking Nvidia from selling advanced chips to China for 30 months

US senators are on the verge of introducing a bill that would block Nvidia from selling its H200 or Blackwell chips to China for 30 months, the Financial Times reports. The H200 is Nvidia’s best chip from the Hopper generation, while the Blackwell line is its current flagship offering.

Shares of the chip designer are little changed in the wake of this report, still up more than 1% on the session. The reaction makes sense, seeing as previous positive indications on Nvidia’s ability to sell advanced chips to China failed to inspire much positive momentum in its shares.

The stock got a short-lived jolt higher (that didn’t last the day!) on November 21 after Bloomberg reported that the Trump administration had discussed the possibility of selling its H200 chips to China.

Nvidia has effectively been shut out of China’s AI market in 2025. First, export restrictions meant it could no longer sell the H20, a nerfed version of its Hopper chip, to the world’s second-largest economy. After that export ban was lifted, demand from China “never materialized,” per Nvidia CFO Colette Kress. Reports indicate that China banned its leading technology giants from purchasing these semiconductors, instead pushing them toward domestic alternatives.

President Donald Trump had mused about allowing Nvidia to sell Blackwell chips to China prior to his meeting with Chinese President Xi in late October, but failed to do so. The two leaders did not discuss the topic at that time.

Per the FT, this upcoming bill would be a bipartisan effort, being cosponsored by the leading Republican and Democrat members of the Senate Foreign Relations East Asia subcommittee.

Luke Kawa8h

AI energy plays soar on an explosion of call buying

Like their quantum computing counterparts, AI-linked energy plays are benefiting from an explosion of bullish options activity on Thursday.

Oklo is up double digits with call volumes above 106,000 as of 2:46 p.m. ET, more than double its 20-day average for a full session, with a put/call ratio of about 0.6. Call options with a strike price of $110 that expire this Friday (which are now in-the-money thanks to today’s surge) are seeing the most activity.
Nuscale, another nuclear energy play, has seen nearly 140,000 call options change hands versus a 20-day average of 51,073.
And fuel cell company Bloom Energy has traded nearly 80,000 calls, roughly twice its 20-day average, with a put/call ratio of about 0.3.

During his appearance on Joe Rogan’s podcast released on Wednesday, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang talked up the potential for nuclear energy, saying, “In the next six to seven years I think you are going to see a whole bunch of small nuclear reactors.”

This adds to the evidence that the speculative bid is back in a big way after smaller stocks tied to the AI boom and quantum computing cratered from mid-October through most of November as credit risk began to seep into the AI trade.

Old electronic items tossed on ground for disposal, Hudson

Technology giants don’t look like they used to, as the asset-light era fades

Oracle and Meta are now some of the most capital-intensive businesses in the S&P 500, spending more than energy giants. I guess data really is the new oil?

David Crowther10h

Matt Phillips10h

Space stocks rip amid speculation on Altman joining race

Space stocks AST SpaceMobile, Planet Labs, and Rocket Lab all soared Thursday amid a recovery in the high-beta momentum class of shares coveted by some retail traders.

(High-beta momo stocks are basically shares that have been on a winning streak for a while, and tend to go up a lot more than the overall market on positive days. Goldman Sachs includes all three of the aforementioned space stocks in its themed basket of such shares.)

There’s little other fundamental news out there on the companies themselves.

But a Wall Street Journal report that OpenAI impresario Sam Altman has been toying with the idea of entering the space industry, potentially standing up a rival to Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite service, may also be contributing.

As we’ve mentioned elsewhere, sometimes these stocks seem to trade on a what’s-bad-for-the-Musk-empire-is-good-for-us-and-vice-versa vibe.