‘I have total faith in Zuckerberg’

Meta Platforms Inc (NASDAQ: FB) is down 26% on Thursday after disappointing on earnings and future guidance, and retail investors are lining up to capitalise on what was the biggest drop the stock has ever seen.

80% of retail investors are buying the stock

Among individual investors, FB is the most traded stock on Fidelity this morning, with a trading volume that beats Tesla – the second-most traded stock by more than five times.

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As of 11:52 a.m., retail traders had placed over 49 thousand buy orders in Meta Platforms against only 12 thousand short orders, suggesting roughly 80% of individual traders were buying the stock on Thursday.

In comparison, Amazon – the next most bought stock on Fidelity had roughly 7 thousand buy orders only. The eCommerce behemoth is set to report its quarterly financial results today, after the bell.

The sharp decline in the stock price resulted in an over $200 billion hit to Meta Platforms in terms of market cap. No other company has seen such a colossal depreciation in the history of the United States.

Experts agree it’s a ‘buy the dip’ moment

Mad Money host Jim Cramer also sees it justified that the plunge in FB should trigger the “buy the dip” instinct.

The price action, he added, is much too similar to July 2018, when FB crashed 19% on slowing user growth, and everyone thought it won’t recover; yet it did. On CNBC’s “Squawk Box”, he said:

I have total faith in Mark Zuckerberg. He can pull off both the metaverse and also deal with the Apple privacy problems. He’s a driven guy, a fierce competitor who’s going after TikTok. He recognises that it’s not an existential moment; it’s a strategic and competitive moment. People are seeing it as existent, and I think they will be proven wrong.

Interestingly, the buy calls on FB don’t stop there. A slate of experts, including Mark Mahaney, Kevin O’Leary, Youssef Squali, Stephanie Link – all see the hit to the stock price as a fantastic buying opportunity.