10/28/2019
By Charles Payne, CEO & Principal Analyst

Standard & Poor’s got ahead of the regulator and decided that several names commonly referred to as technology companies were really in the communication business, so they created Communication Services to better reflect that reality. 

The index is the perfect mix of old names that had taken a back seat to the hot upstarts.

The old guard with the largest weighting in the index includes:

• Charter Communications (CHTR) roots go back to 1933
• Comcast (CMCSA) roots go back to 1963
• Verizon (VZ) and AT&T (T) roots go back to Alexander Graham Bell in 1899

The new upstarts are all millennials:

• Facebook (FB) was founded in 2004
• Twitter (TWTR) was founded in 2006
• Netflix (NFLX) and Google (now Alphabet) (GOOG/GOOGL) were founded back in 1998

For a long time, new school communication names were easy money. While they are doing okay this year, outside of Facebook, they have been underperforming in recent years.

Conversely, those old-guard names are rocking. Ironically, by making moves to facilitate or join in stuff that was the domain of the upstarts, these shares have been rewarded with monster rallies.

For investors, the great news is the broad market can rally without six power names doing all the heavy lifting. 

I think it’s a better proxy for the overall economy, and it makes for a more stable and durable stock market rally.

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Charles Payne
Wall Street Strategies

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