Communications stocks spend another week in the red, falling 5% (NASDAQ:FWONK)
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Another week of a drubbing in the market left very few gainers and lots of losers in Communications stocks, which as a group performed even worse than the prior week’s poor showing – but par for the course in a week where stocks took a licking, driven by news around the Federal Reserve’s three-quarter-point interest rate hike.
The Communication Services Select Sector SPDR Fund (XLC) slid 5.1% over the past five sessions – worse than last week’s 4.9% drop, but again tracking largely with the broader sell-off, as S&P 500 stocks tumbled 6.1% as a group.
And once again, only a few large-cap issues in the sector even managed to eke out a gain for the week – and two of them were tied to Liberty Media’s Formula One Group, which dodged the fate of other big Communications stocks thanks to a midweek upgrade at Morgan Stanley to Overweight. The firm’s analyst Benjamin Swinburne cited 24% price upside, and the Series A stock (FWONA) finished the week 0.2% higher, while Series C (NASDAQ:FWONK) managed a 0.7% gain.
The only other advancer among large-cap Communications names was French telecom Orange (NYSE:ORAN), up 0.5% for the week.
Decliners weren’t in short supply, though, led down by Paramount Global (NASDAQ:PARA) – which slipped 12.6% for the week despite some positive catalysts: Its Viacom18 joint venture took streaming rights to Indian Premier League cricket that were previously held by Disney, and its Top Gun: Maverick surged forward to become the year’s top grosser among domestic movies.
It was almost overtaken among decliners by NetEase (NASDAQ:NTES), which dropped 11.8% for the period in large part due to Thursday’s sell-off in Chinese tech names.
Match Group (MTCH) was caught up in a slump in dating stocks, falling 10.6% for the week and culminating in touching a record low stock price Friday.
The only three gainers over the past five sessions among large-cap Communications Services stocks and larger ($10B market cap or more):
- Formula One Group Series C (FWONK), +0.7%;
- Orange (ORAN), +0.5%;
- Formula One Group Series A (FWONA), +0.2%.
The top five decliners over the past five sessions among large-cap Communications Services stocks and larger ($10B market cap or more):
- Paramount Global (PARA), -12.6%;
- NetEase (NTES), -11.8%;
- Match Group (MTCH), -10.6%;
- BCE (BCE), -9.4%;
- Warner Music Group (WMG), -8.5%.
