The 5 biggest US tech giants are getting a headache

When Facebook changed its name to Meta, the acronym FAANG for the five biggest American tech companies didn't quite fit anymore. Soon after, American television personality Jim Cramer, who coined the term FAANG in 2013, unveiled a new acronym that fits nicely within it — MAAMA Meta, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon and Alphabet, Google's parent company.

The Kotak Mahindra Bank executive vice-chairman and managing director Uday Kotak came up with his own take, playing on the word Maama, which in Hindi colloquial is a word for a person's maternal uncle.

The Economist gave a new name to 5 tech giants, MAAMA: Microsoft, Apple, Alphabet, Meta, Amazon, according to a post on Twitter by the Indian billionaire and world's richest banker. Anyone who understands colloquial Hindi knows that there are 2 meanings of the word maama Wonder, which means if any, is relevant here. Kotak, with a net worth of $16 billion, ranks as the world's richest bank according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index as of December 2021.

While coining MAMAA Cramer, Netflix was removed from the list and replaced it with Microsoft, and Facebook with Meta.

The S&P 500 and Nasdaq posted their biggest weekly declines since the onset of the epidemic in March 2020, and ended up falling sharply lower last Friday, as Wall Street's main indexes fell sharply after a weak earnings report.

The S&P 500 posted its third week of declines, ending 8.3 per cent down from its January record high.

After the tech-heavy index earlier in the week said it was in a correction, losses increased for the Nasdaq, closing down over 10 per cent from its November peak. The Nasdaq has fallen 14.3 per cent from its November peak and closed on Friday at its lowest level since June.

There is a chance that the Federal Reserve will go aggressive when it comes to controlling inflation and tech and growth shares, which is why stocks are off to a rough start in 2022.

After data showed last week that the US consumer prices had the largest annual rise in nearly four decades, investors are keen to see the Fed meeting next week for more clarity on the central bank's plans to tighten monetary policy in the coming months.