Right now, tech companies are making investors long-faced.

The index of the American technology exchange Nasdaq 100 has lost around a fifth of its points since the beginning of the year.

The reasons for this are manifold: the streaming service Netflix is ​​losing subscribers, the chip manufacturer Nvidia is suffering from supply chain problems, the Facebook group Meta is plagued by problems with various governments.

Share price losses for well-known technology companies range from 13 to 67 percent since the beginning of the year.

And there are other bad omens hanging over everything, such as the US Federal Reserve's tighter interest rate policy, the Russian attack on Ukraine and China's zero-Covid policy.

Gregory Bruner

Editor in Business.

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Those who bet last year that the technology stocks could extend their highs are likely to look at their portfolios rather soberly at the moment, if they have not already swept out the shares.

It is completely different if you invested in this area early on, for example ten years ago.

A longer-term comparison with May 2012 reveals that even the worst price slumps are manageable.

Although Netflix stock has lost about 67 percent of its value this year, an investment made in it a decade ago is still up 1742 percent.

The company with the world's largest market capitalization, Apple, has lost around 12 percent of its value on the stock market so far this year.

Anyone who joined in 2012 was able to increase their investment more than eightfold.

Shares in the software manufacturer Adobe have lost almost a third of their value since the beginning of the year, but in the long term they have increased by 1123 percent.

The richest man in the world, Elon Musk, made his fortune through his business ventures as well as through the appreciation of his shares in his own companies.

The price development of his electric car manufacturer Tesla may have played a not insignificant role.

Musk's recently initiated takeover of Twitter and the associated need to sell some of his shares pushed the share price down by almost 14 percent.

However, this does comparatively little harm to an increase of almost 13.906 percent within ten years.

In words, the value of the shares increased one hundred and forty times during this period.

In a ten-year comparison, the list with Meta shares finally closed with a price gain of around 458 percent.

Even that beats the performance of the Nasdaq 100 over the same period.

This has increased by only around 422 percent since 2012.

The price index of the Dax recorded an increase of almost 68 percent within ten years.

After all, the price index of the German technology index Tec-Dax achieved growth of 232 percent.