What happened
You can't keep a good stock down, and judging by its performance Friday Meta Platforms (META -10.56%) is considered a good stock by the investing world. Shares of the social media bellwether inched up by nearly 2% that day, despite a bearish new note from an analyst and a potentially challenging development on the regulatory front.
So what
With the S&P 500 index rising incrementally on Friday after being absolutely hammered in previous sessions, a trickle of optimism returned to the exchanges. Investors were less shy to snap up shares of sector leaders, and Meta is the meta-stock of the social media world.
A potentially higher rise might have been curbed by negative developments. That morning, Bank of America analyst Justin Post trimmed his price targets on several top tech sector names, including Meta, on fears of potentially slowing macroeconomic growth affecting ad spending.
For Meta, this is shaking out to a $1.63 per-share cut to Post's estimate for 2023 per-share earnings, to $12.05. He now feels that the stock is worth $200 per share, down from the former $262.
Meanwhile, across the Atlantic Ocean, a top European Union (EU) regulatory official suggested that privacy cases concerning major tech companies should be adjudicated differently. Wojciech Wiewiorowski, the economic bloc's data protection supervisor, said it would be better if the powerful EU itself was responsible rather than national agencies.
Now what
Meta is certainly vulnerable to wider macroeconomic developments, since a slowing economy tends to reduce those all-important advertising budgets it's so dependent upon. European privacy regulation has been relatively effective, but there remain calls to be even tougher on tech giants; we'll have to watch that space to see how the situation develops.
Regardless of how either dynamic plays out, though, Meta's Facebook is sure to remain the king of the social media hill, and an unavoidable destination for major advertisers.
