NEW YORK: The Nasdaq tumbled early Friday as US stocks resumed their downward slide following disappointing earnings announcements from Amazon and Google-parent Alphabet.
About 15 minutes into trading, the tech-rich Nasdaq Composite Index was down 2.0 percent at 7,171.57.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 1.0 percent to 24,744.72, while the broad-based S&P 500 shed 1.5 percent to 2,666.46.
Both Amazon and Alphabet reported big jumps in quarterly profit, but Amazon’s sales forecast for the critical holiday-shopping quarter disappointed analysts. Alphabet’s revenues in the just-finished quarter also lagged analyst forecasts.
Amazon dropped 7.3 percent, while Alphabet shed 3.0 percent.
US government data, meanwhile, estimated third-quarter growth at a solid 3.5 percent, below the pace of the prior 4.2 percent quarter, but better than expected.
Friday’s weakness on Wall Street pushed the market back into the red where it has been much of October, due in part to fears US corporate earnings have peaked following the one-time surge from the 2017 tax cut legislation.
Other headwinds for stocks have included worries about higher US interest rates and trade war fallout.
US stocks rallied on Thursday, regaining some of the losses from a particularly bad session on Wednesday.
But the Amazon and Alphabet reports “fed into the peak-growth concerns that have afflicted the market this month,” said Briefing.com analyst Patrick O’Hare.
Among other companies reporting results, Colgate-Palmolive slid 5.5 percent after reporting a 13.8 percent drop in third-quarter profits to $523 million due to the strong US dollar and a jump in raw material costs.
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Source: Brecorder
