Big Tech looks smaller every day – if you use stock prices as a yardstick.

Tuesday’s dismal show showed more of the same, variations on a theme that’s been pretty steady for the past few weeks.

Tech stocks, of course, have been hammered, from the biggest companies to the smallest digital-only players. On Tuesday, the tech-heavy Nasdaq fell 4% during the session.

And in the who’s who of those getting a beating, Meta shares were down 3.2% at the close, Apple was down more than 3.6%, Microsoft sank around 3.6%. The Nasdaq is down about 20% since the start of the year.

And, note: the results season is not completely behind us. In fact, the volatility looks set to continue as we see everyone from Alphabet to Apple to Microsoft giving their updates (numbers are coming out as we speak). Beyond iPhone sales, cloud adoption, what YouTube might have recorded in eyeballs and ads, it remains to be seen what the tone of consumer spending was, and is – and importantly , will be.

It is too simple to say that inflation will be the only thing plaguing these companies and presenting challenges. Yes, with prices rising more than 8% year over year, it will come as no surprise to see consumers might opt ​​out of cellphones, gaming systems or tablets. Initially, with some cross-reading on numbers released after the close, MSFT’s cloud revenue was up 26%, Google’s ad revenue was up 22%.

Stick to the basics

As PYMNTS research has shown, the majority of consumers stick to the basics. For platform companies and for streaming companies (gaming, in particular), subscriber lists can also come under pressure, with the COVID surge hitting Netflix prominently in other big tech companies.

Amazon also saw a significant decline on Tuesday, slipping more than 4.5%. It looks like e-commerce won’t be immune to the mounting pressures. As PYMNTS noted earlier today, trucking is slowing and UPS package volumes are down — not the most positive cross-reading for Amazon.

To add a little extra kindling to the fire, Big Tech will face increasing regulatory scrutiny related to payment and trade plans.

Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) Director Rohit Chopra testified before the Senate Banking Committee that “currently, the United States is moving toward a consolidated market structure where finance and commerce intertwine, fueled by uncontrolled flows of consumer data”. He also noted that with a nod to Alipay and others, “The outsized influence of these dominant tech conglomerates over the financial services ecosystem carries risks and raises a host of privacy questions, fraud, discrimination and more”.

As the saying goes, and especially for Big Tech, when it rains, it pours.