Nasdaq Slides, Under Pressure From Amazon
July 28 2017 - 4:42PM
Dow Jones News
By Riva Gold and Corrie Driebusch
-- The Nasdaq Composite extends losses after Amazon results
-- European stocks near three-month lows; Asia shares drop
-- U.S. growth figures confirmed a brighter second quarter
The Nasdaq Composite extended declines Friday, as downbeat
results from internet retailing giant Amazon.com dragged down the
index.
The moves came after a selloff in technology shares pressured
major indexes Thursday, pushing the Nasdaq Composite and S&P
500 to weekly declines.
Shares of Amazon.com dropped 2.5% after its quarterly profit
fell 77%, adding to the downbeat tone around other consumer and
tech companies. Starbucks shares fell 9.2% after the company's
earnings fell short of analyst expectations, while Goodyear Tire
& Rubber declined 8.4% after the tire maker cut its profit
outlook for the year.
Consumer sectors were the worst performers in the S&P 500,
which fell 0.1%. The Nasdaq Composite declined 0.1%.
Tech companies stabilized a bit after big declines Thursday,
though they still notched a 0.6% weekly decline in the S&P 500.
Nonetheless, the sector remains up 22% year-to-date.
"There's been such an enormous run-up in tech that these stocks
are vulnerable to any disappointment," said Russ Koesterich,
co-portfolio manager of the BlackRock Global Allocation Fund. The
question now is if investors sell their positions in tech shares,
into what assets or sectors will they move that money, he
added.
Meanwhile the Dow Jones Industrial Average set a new record
close. The blue-chip index, which tends to swing less on moves in
tech shares than the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite, logged a 1.2%
weekly gain.
The dollar edged lower Friday after data showed U.S. economic
growth picked up in the second quarter but inflation remained soft.
The Commerce Department said gross domestic product, a broad
measure of goods and services produced in the U.S., rose at a 2.6%
annual rate in the second quarter. Economists surveyed by The Wall
Street Journal had expected an increase of 2.7%.
The Fed's preferred inflation gauge, the price index for
personal-consumption expenditures, rose at a rate of 0.3% during
the period.
The WSJ Dollar Index, which measures the U.S. currency against
16 others, declined 0.4%. U.S. government bonds strengthened,
sending the yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note down to
2.291%, according to Tradeweb, from 2.312% on Thursday.
The second-quarter pickup in growth follows a stumble in the
first three months of the year, when GDP grew at a 1.2% pace.
Expectations for solid growth in the second quarter climbed heading
into Friday as data on U.S. factories and jobs offered encouraging
signals on the U.S. economy.
In Europe and Asia, stocks were dragged down by declines in tech
stocks.
The Stoxx Europe 600 fell 1% -- marking its lowest close since
April. Europe's technology sector shed 1.3% on Friday, while
Japan's Nikkei Stock Average and Hong Kong's Hang Seng Index each
fell 0.6% amid pressure on the sector.
Write to Riva Gold at riva.gold@wsj.com and Corrie Driebusch at
corrie.driebusch@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
July 28, 2017 16:27 ET (20:27 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2017 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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