Wall Street has always been subject to fads that generally begin with a rational premise and then morph into bubbles as they gain popularity in the broader public. I am not referring to meme stocks such as GameStop which soared and then crashed based not on fundamentals but on frenzied trading spurred on by Reddit and other forms of social media. Instead, I refer to companies such as Moderna and Peloton that were huge beneficiaries of the Covid-19 pandemic. There was in fact a genuine reason for their stocks to outperform and early investors made a lot of money. However, the following table shows the performance of those stocks from their peak through today. These dreary numbers are not an attempt to dissuade an investor from attempting to capitalize on powerful short-term trends. However, the moral of the story is that playing that game can be very damaging to those who overstay their welcome, even in the case of companies with great stories!
Moderna -74.5%
ETSY -41.8%
DocuSign -83.0%
Zoom -89.5%
Peloton -95.6%
Amazon -39.5%
FedEx -30.5%