Major stock indexes swung higher Wednesday, as former President Donald Trump defeated Vice President Kamala Harris in Tuesday's presidential election. But at least one big-name tech stock is left out of the rally: Meta Platforms.
While Amazon, Alphabet, Nvidia and Microsoft stocks are each trading higher, shares of the Facebook parent company are down 1.5% at 562.68 in Wednesday trading. Snapchat parent Snap is trading lower Wednesday as well.
Investors appear to be anxious about the relationship between Trump and Meta Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg. Trump earlier this year said he considered Facebook an "enemy of the people." Trump also was suspended from posting on Facebook and Instagram for two years following the 2021 riots at the U.S. Capitol.
However, Zuckerberg in the past year has been trying to push Meta's platforms away from politics. Trump said in a recent podcast appearance that he likes Zuckerberg "much better now." And the Meta chief executive joined Amazon founder Jeff Bezos in congratulating Trump on Wednesday.
"Congratulations to President Trump on a decisive victory," Zuckerberg wrote on Meta's Threads app. "We have great opportunities ahead of us as a country. Looking forward to working with you and your administration."
Will Trump Ban TikTok?
Trump's election introduces a big question mark for whether TikTok will be banned in the U.S. Under legislation signed in April by President Joe Biden, TikTok owner ByteDance has until to sell the short-video app or it will be banned in the U.S. ByteDance has sued to block the law.
But Trump said he was against the ban ahead of its approval in the spring.
"There's a lot of good and there's a lot of bad with TikTok," Trump said in a March interview with CNBC. "But the thing I don't like is that without TikTok, you can make Facebook bigger and I consider Facebook to be an enemy of the people along with a lot of the media."
Analysts generally saw the TikTok ban as a positive for Meta and Snapchat, which both have short video products that compete against TikTok for user attention. Snap stock is down 3.4% at 11.78 in recent action. Reddit stock was slightly lower at 121.56 in recent action Wednesday while Pinterest stood out among social media players with a 2% gain on the day to 33.44.
However, Google also has a TikTok competitor in YouTube Shorts but Alphabet shares were up 3% at 176.78 Wednesday.
Analyst Neutral On Meta Stock, Social Media Impact
In a client note Wednesday, Stifel analyst Mark Kelley said a Trump presidency is unlikely to change the fundamentals for Meta stock. Many investors were not expecting a TikTok ban anyway, he noted.
"As such, we don't view a Trump presidency as a negative (for social media), per se," Kelley wrote. "We view his term as unlikely to help the other short-form video properties (Snap, Meta Reels, YouTube Shorts) from attracting more ad budget in the absence of TikTok. Meta and Snap are being weighed down a bit today, so there were clearly some folks who view the election results as a negative, but we're more in the 'neutral' camp."
