Are Stock Pickers Ready to Remove Facebook from "FANG"?

Some investors are beginning to question their FANG stock holdings, according to a recent article in The Wall Street Journal.

While the FANG stocks have “long risen in lockstep and helped power the long-running market rally,” the article reports that since Facebook’s recent disclosure that millions of users’ data was compromised, “stock-picking fund managers have soured on the social network’s shares, with some either partially or completely abandoning their investments.” Some managers, it adds, believes that Facebook’s challenges could dampen user and revenue growth, but maintain that the other three FANG names (Amazon, Google parent Alphabet and Netflix) remain the market’s best bets.

According to the article, the FANG stocks have “together shed more than $200 billion in market value since mid-March when Facebook plunged after acknowledging its data-privacy issues,” but that investors remain optimistic about Amazon and Netflix as “those companies continue to upend the business segments in which they operate—retail for Amazon and media for Netflix.”

That said, the article points out, the FANG names have lost some of their market pull, with their contribution to the S&P 500 gains dipping from as high as 30% in February to 24% as of April 6. “Facebook, meanwhile,” it adds, “is among the biggest drags on the index, overshadowing the declines of even General Electric Co.”