Why did the stock of Meta (Facebook) fall so sharply on Thursday 04-Feb?

On Thursday, 04-Feb, Meta (owner of Facebook), fell 26% in a single day. This was the sharpest fall ever in history in terms of market cap loss. In a single day the fall in market cap of Meta wiped out $232 billion of market cap. That is more than the total market cap of Reliance Industries. The previous worst single day fall was the $182 billion that Apple had wiped out in a single day in Sep-20. But, is there much more to this fall?

Some want to bottom fist in Meta but most are sceptical. Firstly, Meta has guided a weak few quarters, but that was not the only real shocker. The company identified the tweaks by Apple in its app as a key reason as for reducing Meta revenues by nearly $10 billion as this new rule affected ad targeting. However, the worry is also that the advertisements cash cow, may be coming under pressure and that is what is really disconcerting investors.