What Happened?

A number of stocks jumped in the morning session after a Federal judge ruled that advertising giant Google (owned by Alphabet) monopolized online advertising technology. The affected technologies were the publisher ad servers and ad exchanges. These platforms are central to how digital ads are bought, sold, and placed across the internet, and they have been major revenue drivers for Alphabet. The decision raised the possibility that Alphabet could be forced to divest these assets, potentially weakening its control over digital ad infrastructure and creating new growth opportunities for independent ad tech firms.

The stock market overreacts to news, and big price drops can present good opportunities to buy high-quality stocks.

Among others, following stocks were impacted:

• Advertising Software company The Trade Desk (NASDAQ:TTD) jumped 7.7%. Is now the time to buy The Trade Desk? Access our full analysis report here, it’s free.
• Advertising Software company PubMatic (NASDAQ:PUBM) jumped 11.9%. Is now the time to buy PubMatic? Access our full analysis report here, it’s free.

Zooming In On PubMatic (PUBM)

PubMatic’s shares are very volatile and have had 21 moves greater than 5% over the last year. But moves this big are rare even for PubMatic and indicate this news significantly impacted the market’s perception of the business.

PubMatic is down 37.7% since the beginning of the year, and at $9.24 per share, it is trading 61.5% below its 52-week high of $24.02 from May 2024. Investors who bought $1,000 worth of PubMatic’s shares at the IPO in December 2020 would now be looking at an investment worth $313.75.

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