However, if you put aside the immediate right and wrong and really look at the long-term, investors will see a very different picture. For example, if you look at 2025 as a target date for current investments, the attractiveness of the stocks of these big tech companies becomes real - especially at current price points.
So which tech stocks will be worth holding for seven years? RBC Capital has constructed just such an "Imagine 2025" portfolio, selecting tech stocks that they believe will be long-term winners. In a research note, the firm wrote: "We believe that the following companies are best positioned to outperform the average over the seven years to 2025."
Alphabet (GOOG.US,GOOGL.US)
Admittedly, the mighty Alphabet isn't immune to market turbulence, but that doesn't mean it's no longer a stock you should think about buying in the first place.
At the end of the day, it's still an ace stock with a strong buy rating from a majority of analysts, according to TipRanks, and an average analyst price target of $1,346.
Cajun Capital wrote: "Amazon and Alphabet look to be investing particularly heavily in AI, and both have the big data processing capabilities and strong computing power infrastructure to be the biggest beneficiaries of the AI and machine language trends."
Google's parent company has an additional strong point in the form of their self-driving car subsidiary, Waymo, which Alphabet disclosed not too long ago had just recently reached the milestone of 10 million miles of self-driving test miles.
Cajun Capital noted, "Alphabet in particular is leading the way in self-driving car innovation, thanks of course to their big investment in Waymo's self-driving technology."
They emphasized that the upside for Alphabet is that autonomous driving is one of the key areas where AI will make a big impact in the future.
NVIDIA (NVDA.US)
NVIDIA is continuing to push the boundaries of technology forward, and their efforts are sure to continue to reap rewards in the years to come.
NVIDIA stock has underperformed in recent months, but over the long term, they're still a good enough candidate to claim a spot on investors' list of top buy-and-hold stocks.
For example, Jefferies analyst Mark Lipacis said that despite the January setback, NVIDIA remains a "leading player" in a number of long-term themes, including artificial intelligence, gaming, and self-driving technology, and recommended that investors take advantage of the opportunity to buy.
"NVIDIA remains a "leading player" in a number of long-term themes, including artificial intelligence, gaming and autonomous driving technology.
"While no one can guarantee that NVIDIA will be a winner in the AI race, we believe the company does lead the industry and will continue to receive a strong boost, largely due to the value of its Cuda software." Cajun Capital estimates that more than a million engineers now work with Cuda, which is "a key foundation underneath the entire ecosystem."
Amazon (AMZN.US)
I'm afraid no investor would be surprised to see Amazon on this list. The e-commerce giant continues to innovate with an eye toward the future, and it also continues to be active on the merger and acquisition front as it seeks to acquire new technologies and enter new markets.
However, one interesting advantage that not all investors have noticed about Amazon is their leadership in robotics. Cajun Capital writes, "Amazon in particular leads in robotics innovation, which of course has a lot to do with their continued investment in Kiva logistics robots."
The number of Kiva robots they're already using now is on the order of 100,000, which is an army of robots. It's not hard to imagine that, really, by 2025, robots will certainly take up a much larger share of Amazon's massive logistics force.
Cajun Capital pointed out that this of course means that Amazon's operational efficiency will be greatly improved.
It's worth noting that Amazon's ratings profile is a laughing stock on Wall Street. The stock has an average analyst price target of $2,215.
Rapid7 (RPD.US)
If an investor is coming to the stock with an eye on the long term, while still wanting a low share price right now, then Rapid7 is the way to go. The company utilizes its own unique data- and analytics-based approach to providing cybersecurity services.
In Cajun Capital's view, the stock is arguably one of the most attractive candidates in the cybersecurity space, and their not-so-distant acquisition of Komand has further strengthened its appeal.In 2017, the company ate Komand to further strengthen its security capabilities and automated service levels.
Corey Thomas, the company's CEO, commented, "The need for well-designed security services and IT automation solutions is extremely urgent, resources are scarce, and the environment is increasingly complex, with a wide range of threats growing by the day."
"Security and IT solutions must continue to evolve along the lines of text-driven automation, allowing cybersecurity and IT professional awareness to focus on more strategic aspects."
Cajun analyst Matthew Hedberg is particularly bullish on the stock, "Their success has provided a continuing lesson in the power of their platform approach, with impressive cross-sell performance driven by security and IT solutions melded into one service."
Splunk (SPLK.US)
Cajun Capital writes: "Within the software space, we are bullish on Splunk, which is likely a future winner in big data."
What Splunk does, essentially, is turn machine data into answers. They produce software that searches, monitors, and analyzes machine-generated big data through a web-based interactive interface.
A significant portion of those answers come from the company's own machine learning systems, and Splunk's Machine Learning Toolkit platform allows for the creation and testing of a variety of flexible models for different situations.
Cajun Capital said, "One of the key values of the models Splunk creates is that users can apply them smoothly to real-time machine data."
It's important to note that the stock is by no means a favorite of Cajun Capital alone. It has an average Wall Street rating of "Strong Buy" and an average price target of $155.
PayPal (PYPL.US)
One of the most popular stocks among analysts in the fintech space is PayPal, which has an overall rating of Moderate Buy and an average price target of $1,117.
First, PayPal's size is compelling. Second, the stock enjoys a bi-directionality that is unique among tech stocks, targeting both consumers and merchants, which means the company has complete control over the entire user experience.
According to Cajun Capital, "PayPal's unique assets allow the company to capitalize on a long-term global trend that is transforming the economy toward digital commerce."
"Right now, there are still approximately 2 billion people around the world who lack access to financial services, and we believe that the continued growth of the PayPal Asset Platform will open doors for these people."
In a similar vein, Oppenheimer analyst Glenn Greene pointed to PayPal's "unique" competitive position. He's even more optimistic, saying that the company's recent partnerships with a number of key players will ensure that it can continue to grow revenue by more than 15 percent and earnings per share by more than 20 percent over the next few years.
Apple (AAPL.US)
Cajun Capital believes Apple shares have a long road up ahead.
"We believe that Apple will be a significant beneficiary of the development of artificial intelligence, and virtual reality/augmented reality related trends, all of which are significant good news for their services business." They point out that the latest iPhones are already equipped with the ability to recognize, make predictions, and learn through experience.
Even more interestingly, by 2025, the world will have seen a true "iPhone generation" - Apple's smartphones will be 18 years old by 2025.
These are the people who will grow up surrounded by iOS devices, and Apple will be able to get data on all the apps they use, every trip they take, every time they read, every time they shop, their education, their health, their family background, and so on.
Then AI can do great things with that data. "AI will truly become everyone's intimate personal assistant. A highly customized neutral network is extremely powerful, making all services extremely good, while being an efficient guide to all sorts of new services."
Synopsys (SNPS.US)
This is one of the best stocks to buy in the chip sector, and is almost destined to be a winner in the technological trends of the future. According to Cajun Capital, AI can't thrive without AI chips, and Synopsys is essentially an "arms dealer" for AI chips and many other chips.
"By helping other players design complex chips, Synopsys has gained an extremely important position in AI design." The best part, writes Cajun Capital, is that no matter how many new players will emerge, they won't be able to get away from Synopsys.
"Along with the continued technological advances of new and existing companies, Synopsys will continue to help these companies design chips of all sorts, whether it's GPUs, CPUs, FPGAs, Digital Chip, Analog chip, or whatever."
Now, the stock is also broadly bullish on Wall Street, with an average rating of "Strong Buy" and an average price target of $109.
Micron (MU.US)
In the subchip space, Micron is one of the best candidates to consider. All of the trends pointing to the future mean that there will be a lot of data being created, and Micron's DRAM/NAND storage portfolio is perfectly suited for that.
According to Cajun Capital, "The scale of data created by AI, and virtual/augmented reality will be unimaginable, and automated driving will place higher demands on memory and storage, both on the NAND and DRAM side, which will be extremely in demand, and that is a huge long-term boon for Micron."
So what's the right entry point? In this regard, Deutsche Bank analyst Sidney Ho's answer is that the stock's current price is a bargain. He just reiterated his buy rating and $60 price target.
Technology sector analysts have an average rating of "moderate buy" and a $54 price target on the stock.
Microsoft (MSFT.US)
There's no reason why Microsoft should be left off any list of current tech stock recommendations.
Explaining its rationale for including the stock in its own 2025 portfolio, Cajun Capital said Microsoft "has a leading position in a super-sized hybrid cloud platform, and is making great strides in AI, IoT, gaming, and other services".
Like Google's parent company or Amazon, Microsoft stands to benefit greatly from the power of computing, big data sets, and its top data scientists around the world.
Cajun Capital identifies Microsoft as the number one AI company in the public **** cloud space, and their rapidly growing Azure cloud platform deserves the honor.
"We believe Microsoft's capabilities are enviable in the public **** cloud space because their customers also have access to both Microsoft's powerful AI and machine learning capabilities, which Amazon's AWS and Google's GCP struggle to match on their own."
Of the 21 analysts tracking Microsoft, 20 have a "strong buy" rating. The average price target is $142, implying a 17% upside.