MARKET MELTDOWN: Stocks Tank Again After Flirting With Gains
*By Carlo Versano*
Stocks were back to significant losses by late Thursday morning after briefly going positive in early trading. Wednesday's sell-off spilled over into global markets ー first in Asia, where all the major indices were down at least 3 percent, then to Europe, where markets were lower by around a percent in afternoon trading.
The Dow Industrials were down nearly 300 points by 11 a.m. ET. The Nasdaq and S&P were off by about a percent, and the Russell 2000 briefly entered correction territory.
The spread of red ink -- the S&P was down for its sixth straight day -- suggested more turbulence ahead for Wall Street, where a growing list of concerns is sowing unrest for a market that has been on a historic run on the back of strong earnings.
Wednesday's rout, in which the Dow finished down more than 800 points and the tech-heavy Nasdaq lost four percent, started with worry over creeping inflation and tightening Fed policy and quickly turned into an all-out sell-off, with high-flying tech stocks taking the most serious beating.
Amazon ($AMZN) was the biggest loser in the sector, losing more than $56 billion in market cap on Wednesday alone. The much-watched FAANG stocks, which also include Facebook ($FB), Apple ($AAPL), Netflix ($NFLX), and Google parent Alphabet ($GOOGL), shed a combined $175 billion in value ー about the entire market cap of Citigroup ($C).
It was the worst day for stocks in eight months, and the fifth-straight down day for the S&P.
President Trump, who's been quick to tout recent record highs in the market as a result of his economic and foreign policy, took this opportunity to criticize the Fed, calling the central bank "loco" for increasing rates.
The U.S. trade war with China has largely been brushed off by the markets, but the slide shows it may finally be taking a toll. Tech stocks were the biggest losers in China Thursday, with names like Tencent and Xiaomi leading the decline.
Thursday's sell-off only adds to what's already been a rough month for U.S. stocks. The Dow is down more than 3 percent already in October, while the S&P 500 is down over 4 percent. The Nasdaq has fallen nearly 8 percent.
The State Department had been in talks with Elon Musk’s Tesla company to buy armored electric vehicles, but the plans have been put on hold by the Trump administration after reports emerged about a potential $400 million purchase. A State Department spokesperson said the electric car company owned by Musk was the only one that expressed interest back in May 2024. The deal with Tesla was only in its planning phases but it was forecast to be the largest contract of the year. It shows how some of his wealth has come and was still expected to come from taxpayers.
At 100 years old, the Goodyear Blimp is an ageless star in the sky. The 246-foot-long airship will be in the background of the Daytona 500 — flying roughly 1,500 feet above Daytona International Speedway, actually — to celebrate its greatest anniversary tour. Even though remote camera technologies are improving regularly and changing the landscape of aerial footage, the blimp continues to carve out a niche. At Daytona, with the usual 40-car field racing around a 2½-mile superspeedway, views from the blimp aptly provide the scope of the event.
You'll just have to wait for interest rates (and prices) to go down. Plus, this deal's a steel, the big carmaker wedding is off, and bribery is back, baby!
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The Trump administration has ordered the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to stop nearly all its work, effectively shutting down the agency that was created to protect consumers after the 2008 financial crisis and subprime mortgage-lending scandal. Russell Vought is the newly installed director of the Office of Management and Budget. Vought directed the CFPB in a Saturday night email to stop work on proposed rules, to suspend the effective dates on any rules that were finalized but not yet effective, and to stop investigative work and not begin any new investigations. The agency has been a target of conservatives since President Barack Obama created it following the 2007-2008 financial crisis.
