Is this the end for the tech boom?

Facebook, Zynga and Groupon shares have tanked this year. Could the gloom spread to other technology stocks? Matthew Partridge reports.

What's happened?

It hasn't been a good year for investors in technology firms. The Facebook stockmarket flotation, the year's most anticipated offering, ended in disaster when the social network more than halved in value from its initial price of $38. Facebook's shares are still down nearly 40%. The shares of other newcomers to the public market have been hit even harder.

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Dr Matthew Partridge
Shares editor, MoneyWeek

Matthew graduated from the University of Durham in 2004; he then gained an MSc, followed by a PhD at the London School of Economics.

He has previously written for a wide range of publications, including the Guardian and the Economist, and also helped to run a newsletter on terrorism. He has spent time at Lehman Brothers, Citigroup and the consultancy Lombard Street Research.

Matthew is the author of Superinvestors: Lessons from the greatest investors in history, published by Harriman House, which has been translated into several languages. His second book, Investing Explained: The Accessible Guide to Building an Investment Portfolio, is published by Kogan Page.

As senior writer, he writes the shares and politics & economics pages, as well as weekly Blowing It and Great Frauds in History columns He also writes a fortnightly reviews page and trading tips, as well as regular cover stories and multi-page investment focus features.

Follow Matthew on Twitter: @DrMatthewPartri