Move slowly and carefully away from the tech giants

If you hold a lot of tech stocks in your portfolio, you should think very seriously about diversifying away from them, says Merryn Somerset Webb.

There's a sad story in The Times this week of the fate of the sailors on the Dutch East India Company ship, Rooswijk. It sank off the coast of Kent in 1740, and its recent excavation has uncovered a haul of rather lovely silver coins. The not-so-lovely bit is that the coins were sewn into the clothes of many of the 237 sailors who went down with the ship something that wouldn't exactly have helped them save themselves from their watery graves.

I thought of this again when the Nasdaq hit yet another record high on Tuesday as Alphabet (owner of Google) beat earnings forecasts again. Apple, Amazon and Alphabet are now the three most valuable stocks listed in the US. You can argue that they should be: Google's advertising revenues are up 24%, and the company is making so much money that even after the stunning $5.1bn charge to cover last week's fine from the European Union for anti-competitive behaviour, it has still cleared $3.2bn in profit. Not bad going.

Subscribe to MoneyWeek

Subscribe to MoneyWeek today and get your first six magazine issues absolutely FREE

Get 6 issues free
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/mw70aro6gl1676370748.jpg

Sign up to Money Morning

Don't miss the latest investment and personal finances news, market analysis, plus money-saving tips with our free twice-daily newsletter

Don't miss the latest investment and personal finances news, market analysis, plus money-saving tips with our free twice-daily newsletter

Sign up
Explore More
Merryn Somerset Webb

Merryn Somerset Webb started her career in Tokyo at public broadcaster NHK before becoming a Japanese equity broker at what was then Warburgs. She went on to work at SBC and UBS without moving from her desk in Kamiyacho (it was the age of mergers).

After five years in Japan she returned to work in the UK at Paribas. This soon became BNP Paribas. Again, no desk move was required. On leaving the City, Merryn helped The Week magazine with its City pages before becoming the launch editor of MoneyWeek in 2000 and taking on columns first in the Sunday Times and then in 2009 in the Financial Times

Twenty years on, MoneyWeek is the best-selling financial magazine in the UK. Merryn was its Editor in Chief until 2022. She is now a senior columnist at Bloomberg and host of the Merryn Talks Money podcast -  but still writes for Moneyweek monthly. 

Merryn is also is a non executive director of two investment trusts – BlackRock Throgmorton, and the Murray Income Investment Trust.