The bears were very much on the charge yesterday as a rout on Wall Street hit the Nasdaq, with tech stocks hit especially hard, some falling by as much as 10 percent – and analysts yesterday were saying that it’s only going to get worse.
In Australia ASX shares also took a hit – though by not as much percentage-wise, with most technology stocks finishing down around 3-4 percent.
The Nasdaq had been one of the best performing financial assets this year, rising more than 16 percent through September. Yesterday’s fall was the biggest one-day drop since June 2016, tumbling as much as four percent on the day and down 7.8 percent in October.
Online retail giant Amazon.com, which had been up 70 percent through late September, is down 12 percent so far this month. Netflix, which was up nearly 100 percent at the end of last month, is now down 12.8 percent.
Intel and Microsoft fell more than 3.5 percent, while Apple finished at $216.36, down $10.51. Aussie flag flyer Atlassian was down around 3.25 percent.
Overall the Dow dropped more than 800 points amid concerns that the US Federal Reserve will continue to raise interest rates. President Donald Trump predictably said the Fed had “gone crazy”.
About 80 percent of technology stocks are now in what analysts call “correction territory”. Semiconductor stocks have been particularly hard hit, with the Philadelphia Semiconductor index down more than nine percent for the month
Western Digital and Applied Materials finished the day down 49.4 percent and 44.8 percent, respectively, from their one-year highs. HP and Oracle were down 10.4 percent and 11.4 percent, while Microsoft dropped $6.10 to $106.16.
