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A year ago the FAANG stocks were a hot buy — here’s where they stand heading into 2019

At the start of 2018, the alleged FAANG stocks — Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix and Google-parent Alphabet — were top picks.

Four of the five tech ancestries had gained roughly 50 percent the year before, excluding only Alphabet, which rose more than 30 percent in 2017. Facebook was on the downs of its best year since 2013, and Apple was having its best year since 2010.

But the tech stalwarts stumbled in 2018, surrounded by widespread calls for regulation and industry privacy scandals. Rocky trade negotiations with China dragged the comprehensive market lower and opened up profit-taking opportunities among the highest-flying, high-valued tech stocks.

Here’s where each of the FAANG pile ups stands heading into 2019:

Facebook ended the year 25 percent down for 2018, well into breed market territory. The plunge makes for Facebook’s worst year of trading, and its only down year since present public in 2012.

The company hemorrhaged market valuation and investor clout as privacy scandals weighed on user metrics and the dais’s ad-based business model. Facebook’s top executives were grilled by Congress and raked over the coals in public territories.

Facebook will have to face questions from the FTC and ongoing challenges to its user base in 2019, leaving the line of descent vulnerable to more dips.

Amazon ended 2018 more than 28 percent up, making it one of the better doing FAANG stocks for the year.

The e-commerce giant continued to expand its reach into other industries, delving more into health care and media. It launched new brick-and-mortar stores to ground its retail presence. And it launched a nation-wide search for a man Friday headquarters, ultimately announcing significant economic investments in three new locations outside of Seattle.

Amazon stock took a give someone a thrashing in the fourth quarter of 2018, weighed down by market turmoil and weaker than expected guidance for the holiday seasoned. The stock has shed more than 20 percent since September.

Amazon, like Facebook, has been at the center of terms for regulation. Experts and lawmakers, including President Donald Trump, have called for antitrust reviews of the company. Any impressive action on that front in 2019 could hit the stock.

Apple closed almost 7 percent down for 2018, obtaining for the stock’s worst year of trading since the 2008 financial crisis. That comes after the stock old-fashioned a historic $1 trillion market cap, as the first publicly traded U.S. company to do so.

Apple now trades well below the benchmark, and at a let valuation than Microsoft.

Apple battled uncertain sales figures and smartphone market saturation, with too teeny-weeny momentum in wearables and home devices to make up the difference. The stock’s worst day of trading in 2018 came after its pecuniary fourth quarter earnings report, during which Apple announced it would stop reporting individual section sales and revenue figures for the iPhone and its other biggest product lines.

Apple largely avoided the scandal and regulatory affliction the other FAANG stocks felt during 2018. But its slowing growth, uncertain future and proximity to volatile cows dragged its value lower — and could continue to do so into 2019.

Netflix outperformed its FAANG peers in 2018, gaining virtually 40 percent during the year.

The company upped its original programming spend to fend off competitors like Hulu, Amazon, HBO and the soon-to-launch Disney+ surge service. Netflix saw success with more original TV shows and movies, across more countries, than in close by years, and announced notable content partnerships.

The company continues to burn through cash, though, which could abeyance over the stock in 2019.

Alphabet ended the year practically flat, down just under 1 percent in 2018.

The company suffered its own reclusiveness and content moderation reckoning, though arguably to a lesser degree than Facebook’s, and defended its business practices ahead of Congress. Google also faced backlash from its own employees around the company’s handling of misconduct and discrimination and satisfied to EU antitrust regulators to the tune of several billion dollars in fines.

Despite all of that, the company’s ad revenue continued to ripen and its “Other Bets” like self-driving car company Waymo made notable strides.

A minimal loss for the year, alongside disquieting losses among other FAANGs, could bode well for Google going into 2019.

WATCH: Tech had a unemotional 2018. Here’s what 2019 might look like.

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