The Nasdaq’s Mt. Rushmore cracked this week. What next?

This is Bloomberg Opinion Today, an indestructible pillar of Bloomberg Opinion’s opinions. Sign up here.Today’s Agenda Big Tech is not, it t [Bloomberg]( Follow Us [Get the newsletter]( This is Bloomberg Opinion Today, an indestructible pillar of Bloomberg Opinion’s opinions. [Sign up here](. Today’s Agenda - Big Tech is not, it turns out, infallible, writes Parmy Olson. - That’s some [inflationary job growth]( you got there. - [Texas]( and the [U.K.]( have drafty houses in common. - Seriously, though, [Big Tech is too big](. Big Tech’s Shaky Week After years of U.S. mega-tech shares propping up pretty much the entire stock market, investors could almost be forgiven for assuming these pillars were indestructible. Then, oops, one of them fell over this week. Meta Platforms Inc., the company formerly known as Facebook and the “F” in “FAANG,” stunned markets with news its daily user count [fell]( for the first time ever in the latest quarter. The ensuing selloff [wiped $250 billion from Meta’s value](, pulling down much of the tech sector with it. This morning, everybody remembered Big Tech was still pretty good at making money. Amazon.com Inc. shares [jumped]( by 15%, and non-FAANGs Pinterest Inc. and Snap Inc. rose by 30% and [more than 50%](, respectively, on positive quarterly results. Who knew Snap, which makes silly photo filters of people vomiting rainbows, could be profitable? But wait: Spotify Technology SA said it would probably have fewer subscribers than expected. Cue another [selloff](, capping a month of management hand-wringing over Joe Rogan. And you thought meme stocks were a wild ride.   Big Tech has for years been traded as a bloc with reliable returns, but maybe that’s changing as episodes of management folly are being exposed. Mark Zuckerberg, for instance, made Facebook the [least diversified]( company in Big Tech and left itself vulnerable to TikTok Inc. — which Bloomberg LP founder Mike Bloomberg writes is [doing more to constructively humble the giant]( than armies of regulators ever could. Amazon, meanwhile, is reaping the benefits of an early move into cloud computing, and investors cheered its Prime membership fee hike. But Tae Kim notes that won’t be enough to [paper over fairly grim e-commerce sales](, and Amazon’s stock price is still well off its summer peak. The [company also has a talent-retention problem](, amid reports of a toxic work culture, writes Sarah Green Carmichael. That’s the sort of thing that corrodes a structure from the ground up, and Facebook has shown even the biggest companies can fall if they’re not careful. Big Tech can seem monolithic to investors. They all use code, they all use algorithms, they all have Ping-Pong tables in the break room — how different could they be? But humans, not algorithms, run businesses. And humans aren’t invincible, as this week reminded us. — Parmy Olson Terrible News: Job Growth Is Fantastic Last year was a weird one for everybody, and the job market was no different. In July, the Bureau of Labor Statistics first told us, more than a million jobs were created. In several other months, job growth was in the then-disappointing 200,000s. It left us all uncertain about how to feel about the economy. Was it a durable boom or a Covid-laden miasma? Least certain of all was the Fed, which hesitated to tighten monetary policy until it had more clarity, despite growing evidence of inflation getting out of hand. Today’s [job report]( put any such doubts to rest. Some economists thought we might have lost jobs in January, thanks to omicron. Instead we added 467,000 of them, a blowout number under the circumstances. What’s more, the BLS went back and tweaked last year’s numbers to account for better data, changing the picture dramatically. Instead of a Jackson Pollock splatterwork, the year became a serene Hudson River School landscape of steadily rising job growth. Together, the numbers suggest the Fed probably shouldn’t have waited to take away the economy’s precious free money, writes Mark Whitehouse. Now it’s [playing catch-up to inflation](, with strong wage growth working against it. The Fed may have to hammer the economy even harder as a result. Brace for another weird year. Bonus Inflation Reading: Endless [supply-chain woes could hurt industrial profits]( despite healthy demand. — Brooke Sutherland Time for Some Demand-Side Energy Economics It’s February in Texas, and you know what that means: [blackout]( season! Yes, it’s time once again to huddle in dining-room blanket forts and enjoy cold beans by romantic flashlight. This year’s power outages shouldn’t be nearly as bad as last year’s, writes Liam Denning, but the fact we have to think about them at all is a reminder Texas’ whole electrical thing still isn’t nearly weatherproofed enough. Texas could address this by building new plants and connecting its grid to the rest of the country. But Liam suggests another, [cheaper way to help Texas deal]( with iffy power supply: Just cut demand by heating houses and businesses more efficiently, [ya turkey](. The U.K. and Texas don’t have much in common, but it turns out there are too many drafty houses in both Lubbock and [Little Snoring](. The U.K. is dealing with its energy shortage problems by [giving people money to cover soaring bills](. But as Javier Blas writes, weatherproofing buildings could make that government pound stretch further. Telltale Charts Want to see how much influence the Mega Techs have on the market? Just consider the context of [how many gazillions of dollars two of them shifted]( in one day this week, writes John Authers. The U.S. is [falling behind China in the race for global talent](, writes Adrian Wooldridge. Further Reading President Joe Biden should push to [let Medicare negotiate lower drug prices](. — Bloomberg’s editorial board Boris [Johnson has forgotten the First Law of Holes](: When in one, stop digging. — Martin Ivens Chinese Olympic skier Eileen Gu is [feted in China despite being American-born](. But she’s an exception. — Adam Minter Russia and China are [happy to help each other with PR](, but there are limits to how strong their ties can be. — Clara Ferreira Marques Calling [Israel’s treatment of Palestinians “apartheid”]( only inflames passions and doesn’t help Palestinians. — Hussein Ibish MRNA tech could [soon be used to fight HIV](. — Lisa Jarvis ICYMI The DOJ is [investigating short sellers](. The [rise in home prices will continue]( until morale improves. [Reintroducing 20 species]( to the wild could help biodiversity and the climate. Kickers [Cat brains are shrinking](, and it’s humans’ fault. (h/t Mike Smedley) [Natural-gas appliances]( are methane machines. [DaVinci’s screw-rotor design]( works on a drone. This is the age of [the unique baby name](. Notes: Please send Doritos and complaints to Mark Gongloff at mgongloff1@bloomberg.net. [Sign up here]( and follow us on [Twitter]( and [Facebook](. Like Bloomberg Opinion Today? [Subscribe to Bloomberg All Access and get much, much more](. You’ll receive our unmatched global news coverage and two in-depth daily newsletters, The Bloomberg Open and The Bloomberg Close. Before it’s here, it’s on the Bloomberg Terminal. Find out more about how the Terminal delivers information and analysis that financial professionals can’t find anywhere else. [Learn more](. You received this message because you are subscribed to Bloomberg's Bloomberg Opinion Today newsletter. 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