When I ask the teenagers in our extended family why they don’t have a presence on Facebook, they roll their eyes. To them, I’m a quaint baby boomer who compulsively posts photos of the grandkids.

Although Facebook’s number of daily users ticked higher in the third quarter of 2022, the younger generation continues to abandon the world’s largest social media platform for newer, hipper alternatives such as TikTok. Indeed, disappointing forward guidance from bellwether mega-cap technology companies is starting to rattle investors, just as Wall Street was getting its mojo back.

Q3 2022 corporate earnings as a whole have been respectable. Before the opening bell Thursday, Caterpillar (NYSE: CAT), Southwest (NYSE: LUV), Honeywell (NYSE: HON), Comcast (NSDQ: CMCSA), and McDonald’s (NYSE: MCD) all surpassed earnings expectations. The “old economy” has come back with a vengeance.

Meanwhile, we’re getting signs from companies such as Alphabet (NSDQ: GOOGL), Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT), and Facebook parent Meta Platforms (NSDQ: META) that digital ad spending continues to weaken.

Underwhelming Q3 results from a few Silicon Valley stalwarts is fueling worries that consumer spending is softening, and supply-chain issues aren’t getting solved as quickly as expected. We’re hearing rumblings of tech industry cutbacks and layoffs.

Meta Platforms posted dismal Q3 results Wednesday after the closing bell and its share price is getting hammered. Meta was beset by a broad ad-spending slowdown in the quarter, reporting a year-over-year revenue decline of 4%, while missing Wall Street expectations on earnings with a stunning 52% year-over-year decline in net income. The company’s substantial metaverse investments have been eroding earnings.

Meta shares plunged immediately after the earnings report, pushing the stock’s decline to more than 61% this year alone, considerably worse than the tech-heavy NASDAQ’s 30% decline. The following chart depicts the carnage, which has only gotten worse in recent days:

As the progenitor of social media, Facebook is heavily spending on new technologies, with an emphasis on virtual reality, artificial intelligence, and an immersive experience it calls the metaverse.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been hyping the metaverse, but the unproven concept is receiving mostly skepticism. Zuckerberg talks a good game about leading-edge forays, but many of his pronouncements are widely dismissed as corporate spin. Investors and analysts are “unfriending” Zuckerberg.

Zuckerberg has lost more than half his fortune, a mind-blowing $85 billion, since September 2021. For the first time since 2015, he isn’t one of the 10 richest people in America.

WATCH THIS VIDEO: Sustainable Rally or…Another False Hope?

On Thursday, the major U.S. stock market indices closed mixed as follows:

• DJIA: +0.61%
• S&P 500: -0.61%
• NASDAQ: -1.63%
• Russell 2000: +0.11%

Earnings beats among key industrials drove the Dow Jones Industrial Average higher. Meta’s post-earnings plunge of nearly 25% on Thursday weighed on the NASDAQ.

Meta has shed 70% of its value so far this year and 74% since the stock peaked in September 2021, for a total of $730 billion in lost market capitalization.

Investors on Thursday awaited earnings results from Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) and Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN), which are due after the closing bell.

Despite the woes of companies such as Meta, earnings this season have held their own. In further good news, U.S. gross domestic product (GDP), adjusted for inflation, rose 0.6% in the third quarter, a 2.6% annual rate of growth, the Commerce Department reported Thursday. It was the first increase after two consecutive quarterly contractions. The better-than-expected GDP data helped lift the Dow.

What’s more, Wall Street is starting to price in a lower terminal interest rate in 2023 compared with expectations a few weeks ago.

Fed Chair Jerome Powell has been consistently hawkish in his comments. However, members within the Fed committee, notably St. Louis Fed Chair James Bullard, have cheered investors by expressing support for a pause after November’s rate hike.

Markets still expect a 0.75% rate hike in November, but a pause in the hiking cycle would pave the way for a lower terminal rate next year, helping to shore up stock and fixed-income markets. Stay tuned for the Fed’s next policy-making meeting, November 1-2.

There’s another pivotal meeting on November 1 you should know about…

On that date, I’m holding a special investment Town Hall, called “The Marijuana Millionaire Countdown.”

As the U.S. midterm elections loom on the calendar, I’ll explain the little-known reason why federal legalization of marijuana could be days away…and why a slew of states are on the cusp of creating new state-legal markets.

New state-legal markets equal new growth for well-positioned marijuana companies. The time to invest in marijuana stocks is now, before political catalysts propel them higher.

During my online Town Hall, I’ll reveal the one simple marijuana trade that could dump piles of cash into your brokerage account, before the midterm votes are even counted. Click here to grab your free spot!

John Persinos is the editorial director of Investing Daily.

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