Will plunging shares end big tech’s era of ‘pornographic’ profits?

After the astonishing wealth earned during lockdown, investors fear times may never be as good again for Silicon Valley's giants

Last week was a bad time to be a tech billionaire. When the pandemic drove the world online, the founders of Facebook, Google and Microsoft reaped wealth gains described as pornographic" and cemented their position as among the richest cohort ever to have trod the planet. Well, the good times" are over. Sort of.

The world's biggest tech companies reported their latest earnings last week and, for most, the news was bad. Meta (formerly Facebook), Alphabet (formerly Google) and Microsoft saw billions wiped off their values as investors began to worry that the best days of the tech titans were behind them. As investors made for the exit, the five biggest tech stocks crashed by a combined $950bn (820m) at their lowest point. The slide also hit the fortunes of their creators.