Tech stocks just finished a five-week rally — the longest stretch since market peak in November 2021

The Nasdaq just wrapped up its fifth consecutive week of gains, jumping 3.3% over the past five days. It’s the longest weekly winning streak for the tech-heavy index since late November 2021. After its worst year since 2008, the Nasdaq is up 15% through early 2023.

The last time tech stocks enjoyed a rally this long, investors were bracing for the electric car maker of Rivian blockbuster IPO, the US economy was closing in on its strongest year of growth since 1984, and the Nasdaq was trading at record highs.

There’s a lot less champagne this time around. Cost-cutting has replaced growth on Wall Street’s checklist, and tech executives are touted for efficiency over innovation. The IPO market is dead. Redundancies abound.

Earnings reports were the story of the week, with results coming from many of the world’s most valuable technology companies. But the numbers, for the most part, weren’t good.

An apple missed grades for the first time since 2016, Facebook parent Meta recorded a third consecutive quarter of declining revenues, Googlethe core advertising business declined and Amazon ended its weakest year of growth in its 25-year history as a public company.

Although investors had mixed reactions to the individual reports, all four stocks closed the week with solid gains, as Microsoftwhich reported earnings the previous week and issued vague guidance to forecast revenue growth this quarter of only about 3%.

Meta was the best performer of the bunch this week, with the stock jumping 23%, its third-best week on record. In Wednesday’s earnings report, revenue came in slightly above estimates, even as year-over-year sales fell, and the first-quarter forecast was roughly in line with expectations.

Key to the rally was CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s earnings call that 2023 will be the “Year of Efficiency” and his promise that “we are focused on becoming a stronger and more agile organization.”

“It’s really been a game changer,” Stephanie Link, chief investment strategist at Hightower Advisors, said in an interview Friday on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”

“The quarter itself was OK, but they finally bought into the cost cutting and so I think Metta really took off,” she said.

Zuckerberg acknowledged that times are changing. From the year of its IPO in 2012 to 2021, the company is growing between 22% and 58% annually. But in 2022, revenue fell 1%, and analysts expect growth of just 5% in 2023, according to Refinitiv.

On the earnings call, Zuckerberg said he doesn’t expect the declines to continue, “but I also don’t think it’s going to go back to where it was before.” Meta announced in November that it would cut 11,000 jobs, or 13% of its workforce.

Link said the reason Meta stock had such a big jump after earnings was because “expectations were so low and the valuation was so compelling.” The stock has lost nearly two-thirds of its value in the past year, far more than its mega-cap peers.

Apple, which fell 27% last year, gained 6.2% this week despite reporting its steepest drop in revenue in seven years. CEO Tim Cook said the results were impacted by a strong dollar, manufacturing issues in China affecting the iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max and the overall macroeconomic environment.

“Apple is doing pretty well in this admittedly very difficult environment overall,” Dan Flax, an analyst at Neuberger Berman, told “Squawk Box” on Friday. “As we move through the coming months and quarters, we will see a return to growth and the market will begin to reflect that.” We continue to like the name even in the face of these macro challenges.”

Amazon Chief Executive Andy Jassy, ​​who will succeed Jeff Bezos in mid-2021, took the unusual step of joining the earnings call with analysts on Thursday after his company posted a weaker-than-expected first-quarter forecast. In January, Amazon began layoffs that are expected to result in the loss of more than 18,000 jobs.

“Given that this past quarter was the end of my first full year in this role, and given some of the unusual parts in the economy and our business, I thought this might be a good thing to join,” Jassi said during the the conversation.

Cost management has become a big topic for Amazon, which grew rapidly during the pandemic and later admitted it had hired too many people during that period.

“We’re working really hard to streamline our costs,” Jassi said.

Alphabet is also in downsizing mode. The company announced last month that it was cutting 12,000 jobs. Its fourth-quarter earnings miss included disappointing YouTube sales due to a pullback in ad spending and weakness in its cloud division as businesses tighten their belts.

Ruth Porath, CFO of Alphabet, told CNBC’s Deirdre Bossa that the company is meaningfully slowing its hiring pace in an effort to ensure long-term profitable growth.

Alphabet shares ended the week up 5.4%, even after giving up some of their gains during Friday’s selloff. The stock is already up 19% for the year.

If the Nasdaq continues its uptrend and posts a sixth week of gains, it will match the longest rally in a period that ended in January 2020, just before the Covid pandemic hit the US

Investors will now turn to earnings reports from smaller companies. Some of the names they will hear next week include Pinterest, Robin Hood, Confirm and Cloudflare.

Another area in tech that boomed this week was the semiconductor space. Like consumer technology companies, there hasn’t been much growth to excite Wall Street.

AMD on Tuesday beat sales and profit, but pointed analysts to a 10% year-over-year revenue decline for the current quarter. Intel, AMD’s main competitor, reported a disastrous quarter last week and forecast a 40% drop in March sales.

Still, AMD jumped 14% for the week and Intel rose nearly 8%. Texas Instruments and Nvidia also posted good profits.

The semiconductor industry is facing a glut of spare parts at PC and server makers and falling prices for components such as memory and CPUs. But after a miserable year in 2022, stocks are rebounding on signs that easing Federal Reserve rate hikes and falling inflation will give companies a boost later this year.

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