Acquisitions from the acquirer side always tank the stock, the acquired always get a bump. The down market and the $20B spend is why it is down.

From an ADBE perspective, this actually is a good long term move and shouldn't be such a hit.

From Figmas perspective, I am sure this was one of their hopeful outcomes.

If people here don't like the outcome, then I wonder if they know what type of game they support. This is the game with VC/growth/exits.

I had a similar thought..

I figured the dynamic here is market gets a checkpoint where the acquirer has admitted they're moving into maturity and so switching from build to buy.

But my first check was MSFT acquisition of GutHub.. was up on the day. Nadella had been turning the ship for a while and MS was certainly looking revived by that point.

So, not always down. There are win-win acquisitions

How can you tell what the market thinks about this decision when a company's stock price is a function of what is happening publicly at the company AND externally in the economy? How do you separate the 2 drivers?

Compare stocks with the highest correlated log returns. Anything that's economic should impact the correlated group the same, if it's company specific then that company will stand out.

Most correlated with ADBE (all have > 0.8 correlation) that I see with there price change today are:

ANSS (-0.77%)

INTU (-1.94%)

CRM (-1.73%)

MSFT (-1.77%)

ADSK (-2.61%)

As you can see none of these stocks are experiencing anywhere near the drop today that ADBE is, so you can pretty reasonably explain the drop as company specific.

Adobe posted earnings today.

Yea, again how can you separate the market's reaction to 1) earnings from 2) the acquisition?