Investors have been getting back into tech stocks, with the tech-heavy Nasdaq leading all three major Wall Street indexes since the start of the year, rising over 6%. But fund manager Trent Masters of Alphinity Investment Management isn’t convinced — and told CNBC Pro Talks last week which two Big Tech stocks might be worth avoiding for now. Masters manages the Alphinity Global Equity Fund, which outperformed the MSCI World Index last year. He doesn’t own any Big Tech names at the moment, except for a “residual position” in Apple. Meta Masters told CNBC Pro there are “genuine questions” over a few companies’ business models — and Meta is the “most exposed” of the lot. With Meta shares tumbling, investors are starting to think that it’s “got some value.” “But for me there is that kind of continuing worry that you’ve had engagement fundamentally eaten by TikTok given that crossover between TikTok, Facebook and Instagram,” Masters said. According to FactSet, 31% of analysts covering the stock gave it a “hold’ rating. Meta is down 57% over the past year. Apple Masters said the latest iPhone release was “fairly tepid” as “there wasn’t really much in terms of product iteration.” On top of that, the company is facing an environment with “fairly pinch” consumers who are less willing to spend. “So if I’m looking more at the shorter term, I just think some of those earnings expectations for Apple need to revise over the next year or two,” he said. In the longer term – 10 years – he says Apple might be able to meet mid-single-digit growth of up to 10%. “That has to be through constant innovation and pushing out new products,” he said. “But a lot of these things are quite a way out before they start to come to maturity. So I think you know, the focus on Apple over the next year or two will be about that pinch consumer, which will make it quite difficult for them to achieve the earnings outcomes that the market expects,” he said. But on the whole, analysts were still optimistic on Apple, giving it upside of 26%, with 73% of them giving the stock a buy rating. Apple is down around 20% over the past year.
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