Tesla’s stock decline was bad. But this company wiped out more investor wealth in 2022.

You might expect that Tesla’s stock decline has wiped out more investor wealth than any other stock in the world this year. But you’d be wrong.

If we look at the declines in market capitalization — the value of common stock of existing companies — Tesla TSLA
It was the fourth-worst performer in the S&P 500 this year, as of 1 p.m. EST on Dec. 21:

On a percentage basis, all of these stocks performed worse than the full S&P 500, which is down 19%, excluding dividends.

Amazon.com Inc. AMZN
It has spent more shareholder wealth than any other publicly traded company in 2022. In total, Amazon investors have lost $804.6 billion this year. Inventory is down 48% in 2022.

Apple Inc. AAPL
and Microsoft Corp. MSFT
It also suffered larger market value declines than Tesla, due to its massive size.

Companies have different fiscal and annual periods, but if we look at data for the past three reported quarters and compare it to the same period a year earlier, here’s how the four stack up:

Amazon showed a net loss of $3 billion for the first three quarters of 2022 as the company nears the end of its extraordinary multi-year effort to build out its warehouse and fulfillment infrastructure. In the first three quarters of 2021, the company generated $19 billion in revenue. In announcing its third-quarter results, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said the company is working systematically toward a “stronger cost structure for the business going forward.”

The impressive growth of Amazon’s cloud business has stalled and expectations the company has nurtured on Wall Street have been disappointed. The Amazon Web Services business is facing increasing competition from the likes of Microsoft and its customers are declining. Meanwhile, retail sales also declined as the Christmas and holiday season approached.

Amazon stock is down 22% since closing at $110.96 on Oct. 27, before disappointing investors not only with its third-quarter results, but with its outlook: It expects to break even during the holiday quarter. Analysts polled by FactSet had earlier expected a profit of more than $5 billion.

Tesla stands in contrast to Amazon, as you can see in the table above. Its sales grew 58% during the first three quarters of 2022 compared to the same period last year, and earnings per share nearly tripled.

This year has seen a significant drop in stocks of tech-oriented giants, particularly those trading at high price-to-earnings valuations — that group includes Amazon and Tesla. In effect, these companies have given up all of their pandemic-era gains in the stock market.

But with Tesla’s results so notable for the first three quarters of 2022, it raises the question: How much of the drop in the electric car maker’s share price was related to Musk’s actions as CEO of Twitter, which he acquired on Oct. 27 after a drawn-out saga? And how much, if any, comfortable recovery could there be for Tesla if, as expected, Musk steps down as CEO of Twitter?

How about some bottom feeding?

Here’s the same list of the 10 S&P 500 stocks that experienced the biggest drop in market value this year, with a summary of analyst ratings, agreed-upon price targets, and dips in forward price-earnings ratios:

The majority of analysts see a golden path ahead for 2023 for all of these stocks except for Netflix.

For more information on any of these companies, click Indicators.

Click here for a detailed guide to the wealth of information freely available on the MarketWatch quotes page.

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