Lessons from Meta’s 2022 Crash: Navigating Market Panic with Rational Investing
Who could forget 2022, when Meta's stock price fell below $90? I was in shock. Meta, a company with annual revenue exceeding $116 billion, minimal debt, and a cash-rich balance sheet, faced a sell-off unlike anything I'd seen before. The catalyst? Mark Zuckerberg's ambitious push into the metaverse. What Happened to Meta? The metaverse—a virtual universe Zuckerberg envisioned as the next big tech frontier—was a polarizing investment. Shareholders viewed Meta's substantial spending on R&D as reckless, creating uncertainty about its financial future. This sentiment drove the stock from its high of $350 to under $90, sparking widespread panic. At the time, Meta was already a dominant force in the tech world, generating billions in revenue from advertising on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. Even so, the decision to pour billions into the metaverse, with no guarantee of a return, led many investors to question whether Zuckerberg was making a monumental ...