Dow Plunges Over 800 Points as Investors Flee Tech
*By Kavitha Shastry*
U.S. stocks accelerated their losses Wednesday, with the Dow tumbling more than 800 points for its biggest point drop since February.
Shares of Amazon ($AMZN) and Microsoft ($MSFT) were down more than 4 percent late in the trading day, while Jack Dorsey's Twitter ($TWTR) and Square ($SQ) were both down more than 7 percent.
"Valuation is just coming to a bit more realistic levels in the tech sector," said John Petrides, Managing Director at Point View Wealth Management. "How many times have we spoken about tech being the driving sector for the market returns.
"Twenty-six percent of the S&P 500, the FAANG stocks equalling 45 percent of the Nasdaq ー you're having profit-taking there."
The sell-off adds to October's market losses ー the S&P 500 is now down five days in a row, its longest losing streak since before the 2016 election ー with investors worried about the impact of ongoing trade tensions and borrowing costs at seven-year highs.
While tech stocks were among Wednesday's biggest losers, high-end retailers also took a hit. France's LVMH warned it was seeing slower demand from Chinese consumers, an indication that tariffs from the U.S. were eating into discretionary budgets. Shares of Tiffany ($TIF), Michael Kors ($KORS), and Ralph Lauren ($RL) were all down.
The Nasdaq led losses among the broad market indexes, falling more than 3 percent. For the month, it's already down nearly 8 percent, its biggest monthly decline since January 2016.
Oracle soars as it cashes in on the AI boom, Plus: Starbucks shares continue to fall under its new CEO, and does anybody actually want a new iPhone Air?
Swedish buy now, pay later company Klarna is making its highly anticipated public debut on the New York Stock Exchange Wednesday, the latest in a run of high-profile initial public offerings this year. The offering priced at $40 Tuesday, above the forecasted range of $35 to $37 a share, valuing the company at more than $15 billion. The valuation easily makes Klarna one of the biggest IPOs so far in 2025, which has been one of the busier years for companies going public. Other popular IPOs so far this year include the design software company Figma and Circle Internet Group, which issues the USDC stablecoin..
Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison wrested the title of the world’s richest man from longtime holder Elon Musk early Wednesday as stock in his software giant rocketed more than a third in a stunning few minutes of trading. That is according to wealth tracker Bloomberg. A college dropout, the 81-year-old Ellison is now worth $393 billion, Bloomberg says, several billion more than Musk, who had been the world’s richest for four years. The switch in the ranking came after a blockbuster earnings report from Oracle. Forbes still has Musk as the richest, however, valuing his private businesses much higher.
