What happened

Zoom (ZM 0.83%) was beating the market Thursday: Its shares were up by 6% as of 12:45 p.m. ET compared to a 0.1% drop in the S&P 500. That pop erased just a small portion of the video communications specialist's stock declines for this year. It remains down by 56% so far in 2022.

The day's gains came as investors' sentiment around tech stocks continued to swing, this time toward the positive.

So what

The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite was up by 1.1% in early afternoon trading, and the broad factors driving its bounce were the same ones underpinning Zoom's move. The company's shares have lost 71% of their value in the past year, and are now near the level they traded at in February 2020 -- before their pandemic-powered surge. Its price-to-sales ratio has also plunged, reflecting investors' pessimism about Zoom's growth prospects now that workplace behaviors are reverting to more normal patterns. Given the scale of its stock price decline, any improving optimism on Wall Street is likely to push Zoom higher.

Investors also have some good reasons to be attracted to Zoom's stock now. The company's enterprise division is still growing sales at a robust pace. That segment is likely to be a strong growth avenue for many years as more companies offer employees the flexibility of hybrid work. Zoom remains profitable, too, unlike many other growth stocks, and it has plenty of cash and little debt.

Now what

Earnings season started this week, and the reports out so far have painted a more positive picture of the economy and consumer spending than many investors had expected. But it will still be some time before we know whether the U.S. economy is stabilizing at a slow pace of growth or slipping into a recession.

The cloudiness of the outlook is a major reason why stocks in general are so volatile right now, and that macro situation likely means more wild swings are ahead for Zoom's share price. Long-term investors should try to tune out that noise and focus on the company's growth strategy, which is targeting much higher revenues over the next few years.