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Why Uday Kotak thinks ‘MAAMA’ knows best, for investors – Moneycontrol.com

Uday Kotak, Executive Chairman and Managing Director of Kotak Mahindra Bank, referred to “MAMAA”. (illustration: Moneycontrol)

After Mark Zuckerberg announced in October last year that Facebook is rebranding itself as Meta, American television personality Jim Cramer came up with a new term to refer to prominent American technology companies. He coined the acronym, “MAMAA”, referring to Meta, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon and Alphabet, and Google’s parent company.

Business magnate Uday Kotak interpreted the acronym in a desi style, tweaking it to “MAAMA (uncle)”.

“The Economist gives new name to big 5 tech giants, MAAMA: Microsoft, Apple, Alphabet, Meta, Amazon. Anyone who understands colloquial Hindi knows there are 2 meanings of word “maama”. Wonder which meaning if any, is relevant here. Woh hamare maama banenge, ya hum maama banenge (they become our uncle or we become an uncle),” Uday Kotak, CEO of Kotak Mahindra Bank, tweeted on Monday.

Cramer had in 2013 coined the widely-used acronym, “FAANG”, that referred to five prominent American technology companies: Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, and Alphabet (formerly known as Google).

While coining “MAMAA”, he dropped Netflix from the list and replaced it with Microsoft, and Facebook with Meta.

Earlier this month, Apple became the first US company to hit $3 trillion in market value, briefly reaching the landmark in the latest demonstration of the tech industry’s pandemic surge.

While the top tier of US stock markets are dominated by Silicon Valley companies, Microsoft is the only other American company worth more than $2 trillion.

US stocks saw a steady fall last week as investors shunned equities amid lingering worries over surging global inflation and the prospect of rising interest rates.

Jeremy Grantham, a co-founder at one of the world’s biggest hedge funds Grantham, Mayo & Van Otterloo, believes that the “superbubble” in the US equity, housing, bond, and commodity markets is on the verge of bursting.

Grantham, a so-called permabear, in a note on January 21, warned that the standard bubble in the US equities market that was visible in 2021 had graduated to a “superbubble”, the likes of which have been witnessed only thrice in the history—1929, 2000, and 2007.