In the U.S. stock market, investors had initially hoped that the new year would bring a reversal of fortune for software stocks, which had underperformed the previous year. However, the sector has instead kicked off the year with its worst performance in recent memory. Industry data reveals that a basket of SaaS (Software as a Service) stocks monitored by Morgan Stanley has plummeted by 15% since the start of this year. This follows an 11% decline in the previous year, marking the poorest annual beginning for these stocks since 2022. (Here, "poor annual beginning" is a more natural and slightly adjusted version of "worst annual start" to fit better with the context and flow of the sentence, while still conveying the same meaning.)
