Digital Stocks' YTD Performance: Meh (Stay Private, Mark!)

In a Wall Street Journal article today, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is portrayed as not particularly eager to take his social networking phenom public.

That has pretty much been his well-known attitude for a long time now–which has occasionally put him at odds with others–due to a range of issues, from the company not being ready for prime-time to Zuckerberg’s likely distaste for having Wall Street investors second-guess him.

His ability to stay private and avoid an IPO–at least for the short term–was, in fact, sealed by a recent giant funding the company received from a Russian investment firm.

And looking at the stock performance of four big digital companies so far this year, there has not been much upside yet for Facebook to jump into.

For the year to date:

Yahoo (YHOO) shares are down 7.2 percent.

Apple (AAPL) stock, normally a fizzy one, is down .67 percent.

Google (GOOG) shares have dipped 12 percent.

And Microsoft (MSFT) is down 6.6 percent.

You get the idea, but here’s the chart, below: