Facebook. Apple. Amazon. Netflix. Google. Five Big Tech giants known in investing circles simply as FAANG for years.
That was until Mark Zuckerberg channeled his inner meta on Thursday.
The FAANG investing acronym was created in 2013 by Jim Cramer, the founder of TheStreet (full disclosure, my former boss who also created the term “Cloud Kings”). It was both catchy as hell and true to form for the companies it represented.
Think of a fang on a rabid dog and it’s not unlike all five tech giants shredding the throats of inferior companies across the spectrum. And because of that ferocity leading to eye-popping profits almost every single quarter (except Amazon on Thursday night), fang also reflected the aggressive nature of the stock prices of all five tech beasts.
FAANG as an investment has just worked incredibly well in popular investing culture, and financially speaking.
The NYSE FANG Index — which tracks mostly the performance of these companies — has returned a sterling 455% over the past five years. Facebook — the first name in the investing acronym —has gained 163% in five years time.
Collectively, the five FAANG stocks have appreciated an average of 322% in the past five years.
Impressive stuff.
But now all the investing fun here is done because of Zuck.
Come Dec. 1, Facebook will officially change its name to Metaverse. New ticker symbol: MVRS.
So get ready to usher in the era of MAANG. We hope it will prove as fruitful as the soon to be deceased FAANG.
Brian Sozzi is an editor-at-large and anchor at Yahoo Finance. Follow Sozzi on Twitter @BrianSozzi and on LinkedIn.
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