EDITOR'S NOTE
While the broad market suffered a brutal sell-off on coronavirus fears, Amazon swiftly rejoined the coveted trillion-dollar club after knockout quarterly earnings.
The only four companies with more than $1 trillion market capitalization — Apple, Amazon, Microsoft and Google-parent Alphabet — have actually traveled similar paths on their journey to the pinnacle, CNBC’s Michael Sheetz writes. 
These tech giants all looked to services and cloud businesses for growth in the past couple of years. In turn, the market has rewarded the companies richly, as each of their market values have climbed to record levels.
Friday’s sell-off also spoiled an old market indicator “January barometer” that was signaling a positive year. The indicator suggests a correlation between January’s performance and full-year returns, AKA the saying “as goes January, so goes the year.”
The losses cut the January returns for the S&P 500 to just about flat. Perhaps the indicator now is signaling a volatile year we may have ahead.
The biggest risk to the market right now seems to be the worsening coronavirus, which forced major U.S. airlines to halt service to China altogether.
“Uncertainty is never great for stocks, but when it involves the lives of many, many people, it’s impossible to know just what kind of problems this uncertainty will eventually create,” said Matt Maley, chief market strategist at Miller Tabak.
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