“Technology stocks failed in a late-session bid to erase their losses on Friday, and the Nasdaq Composite Index notched its lowest close in six years,” Rex Crum reports for MarketWatch.
“‘The driving emotion on Wall Street has been fear,’ said Frederic Dickson, chief market strategist at Davidson Companies. ‘Investors continue to be shell-shocked by the heavy selling which has taken the major market indices down more than 55% from their all-time peak. Punctuating the mood for most of the session, the Labor Department reported that the U.S. lost 651,000 jobs in February to bring the nation’s unemployment rate to a 25-year high of 8.1%,” Crum reports.
“However, U.S. stocks initially rose as many economic experts were looking for the job losses to exceed 700,000,” Crum reports.
Apple Inc. (AAPL) fell $2.19 a share, or 2.6% to $83.11. “J.P. Morgan analyst Mark Moskowitz cut his earnings and sales forecasts for the company, citing the ‘deepening global downturn’ that he expects will peel away sales of both Mac computers and iPhones,” Crum reports. “‘Also, while a lot remains to the March quarter, inputs from our primary research contacts suggest that Mac and iPhone volumes had been trending below our prior expectations,’ Moskowitz wrote in a note to clients.”
Crum reports, “The analyst said he now expects Apple to earn $4.73 a share on $32.98 billion in sales for its current fiscal year, down from an earlier estimate of $4.82 a share on almost $34 billion in revenue. Other tech hardware stocks also retreated…”
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Brawndo Drinker” for the heads up.]
