Microsoft is becoming the most valuable company in the world

The so-called FAANG firms --- Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, and Google --- all finished last Monday in the red as the sell-off deepened. It was the continuation of a downward spiral that has run for weeks.

Excluded from the FAANG group, Microsoft has outperformed those stocks since the start of October as investors bet that spending from businesses for cloud services and software will remain strong. After years of derision for missing opportunities in markets such as digital advertising and social media, Microsoft now finds itself more insulated from the regulatory and data privacy scrutiny aimed at Facebook Inc. and Alphabet Inc.'s Google. Microsoft gained as much as 2 percent on Wednesday.

Microsoft is also expected to become one of the next companies worth more than $1 trillion.