INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Today was an awful day for the stock market, with global and domestic equities falling sharply as the world digested a collapse in oil
prices, and yet another weekend of the spread of COVID-19
All major United States indices were down, with the tech-heavy Nasdaq falling the least of the three, slipping a comparatively modest
technology market actually fell further than the Dow Jones Industrial Average or the S-P 500: SaaS and cloud stocks, as measured by the
Bessemer-Nasdaq index.Indeed, the BVP Nasdaq Emerging Cloud Index was off 8.28% today, closing at 1,134.51
the excellent Financial Times).That means that SaaS and cloud stocks are off the requisite 20% needed to classify as in a bear market
A correction is defined as a 10% decline from recent highs
They could easily reach the threshold tomorrow, but SaaS got there first.It was just three days ago that SaaS stocks approached the
Covering that marker earned me some flak on Twitter, as some folks invested in the success of SaaS read the news item as a dis of the
about to price them more cheaply than other types of companies.However, what does seem clear is that there is less short-term optimism about
SaaS than there was just a few weeks ago, when, in mid-February, companies in the sector set all-time record highs on the public markets
For example:Atlassian was off 7.87% today, but still had a price/sales multiple of over 23, per YCharts data.Slack was off 6.13% today, but
felt today, or the gut-drop that SaaS startups felt as they watched their leading lights get pummeled on the stock market
But SaaS highfliers are still just that, and the whole category is still expensive
So, pour one out, but just one
Another day or two like today, however, and worry becomes a bit more understandable.
