Although we don't believe in timing the market or panicking over daily movements, we do like to keep an eye on market changes -- just in case they're material to our investing thesis.
The stock market gave back some ground in Tuesday's trading, with investors seemingly waiting for more clarity on what Federal Reserve policymakers intend to do with their economic stimulus plans in 2014. Encouraging economic news has made many people nervous about a potential reduction in quantitative easing, but bulls think that the economy is strong enough to handle the Fed's withdrawal. Regardless, many stocks bucked the downward trend in the market, with SINA (SINA +0.00%), Twitter (TWTR +0.00%), and 3D Systems (DDD +13.89%) posting solid gains of 6% to 7%.
In some ways, the jumps in SINA and Twitter seem related. SINA gained 7% on a good day for China's Internet stocks generally, but SINA's Weibo is generally seen as a close analogue to Twitter in the Chinese Internet world. With Twitter getting a lot of attention this week, it's only natural for those who are excited about the prospects of microblogging generally to look at SINA, which got a vote of confidence earlier this year when Alibaba Group took an 18% stake in Weibo. Moreover, with many seeing U.S. stocks as overpriced, looking abroad for bargains makes a degree of sense.
Meanwhile, Twitter climbed another 6%, hitting a record high as investors continued to pile into the newly public social-media play after it released marketing and advertising tools to help paying users take more advantage of the site's potential. Monetization has always been the big challenge for social-media giants, and Twitter isn't wasting any time getting itself in position to tap as many revenue sources as possible. Even with new tools, though, Twitter will face an uphill battle in working its way toward long-term profitability.
3D Systems rose 6% as analysts at Deutsche Bank issued a buy rating on the 3-D printing stock. The firm believes that even with increasing competition in the space, 3D Systems is working to broaden its scope and offer a wider variety of materials and different services. If the company can follow that growth trajectory, then gains like today's could be just the beginning of another massive run for the company in the long run.
