Five Imploding $40 Billion Companies Are Shadows Of What They Were

"No one can confidently answer the question of when stocks will hit the bottom, but if the options market is the primary focal point for many traders, that could suggest downward pressure on stocks could last a while longer," says Edward Moya, strategist at Oanda.

S&P 500 Wreckage Everywhere

The S&P 500's 18.3% drop from the high may not sound like much. After all, that's not even bad enough to qualify as a 20% bear market. But that's masking the massive wealth destruction going on.

All investors as a group are now down more than $10 trillion this year, says Wilshire Associates. And some big names account for a bulk of those losses. The largest loss in market value from the all-time high is Amazon. Shares of the online retailer shed a remarkable $766 billion in market value from its all-time high on July 13, 2021. That's a 43% drop in market value.

And some are concerned, too, Apple is getting dragged in as well. Apple investors lost $638 billion in market value, or 22%, from their all time high on Jan. 4, 2022. "It is a troubling sign when investors sour on best of breed names in an already difficult tape," said Nicholas Colas of DataTrek Research.

But those drops are merely a flesh wound compared to the market's biggest reversals of fortune.

Peloton, Teladoc Inflict A World Of Hurt

Think keeping up with Peloton instructors is painful? Try owning the stock.

Shares of Peloton topped out with a massive $45.4 billion market valuation on Nov. 18, 2021. The stock hit 176.65 on that day as it looked like people would ditch their gyms and workout at home. But now it's the Peloton investors who are sweating and perhaps hoping for a buyout. The company's market value shriveled nearly 90% from the highs to be worth just $4.6 billion now, or 13.83 a share.

Furthermore, investors don't have any fundamentals to lean on. The exercise bike company is expected to lose upwards of $3 billion dollars, or nearly as much as the entire company is worth, over the next three years.

It's a similarly dire situation over at online health firm Teladoc. This is a company that was valued at north of $42 billion when it peaked out on Feb. 16, 2021. But its value has sunk nearly 90% since then to just $4.9 billion. And again, analysts sees losses as far as the eye can see. The company is expected to lose $233 million in 2022, $201 million in 2023 and $98 million in 2024.

And then there's the epic fail of online housing listing company, Zillow. Disastrously poor business decisions prompted the company worth $48 billion in February 2021 to drop to just $9.2 billion now.

But won't these fallen heroes bounce back? Don't count on it. The Gap, Xerox and Juniper were also all formerly worth more than $40 billion roughly two decades ago. All of them are worth less than $10 billion today.

Ouch! Fallen $40 Billion Companies

Companies peaked at $40 billion or more since 2020 all worth less than 25% of that now

Sources: IBD, S&P Global Market Intelligence

Follow Matt Krantz on Twitter @mattkrantz