In volatile trading on Thursday, share prices fell as Apple and Microsoft led the broader market lower. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 410 points, or 1.3%, after trading up 30 points at its session high. The S&P 500 slid 1.2%, on pace to snap a four-day winning streak. The Nasdaq Composite fell 2.2% as the sell-off in major technology companies deepened.
Microsoft shares were down by 4.1% despite reporting better-than-expected earnings for the previous quarter. Though the company’s results were largely positive, Microsoft said its transactional license purchasing continued to slow and that subsidiary LinkedIn was negatively impacted by the weak job market.
Apple traded 4.8% lower, while Amazon and Netflix dropped 3.6% and 3.1%, respectively. Tesla, meanwhile, gave back its earlier gains — now falling 5.5% — despite reporting earnings that blew past analyst expectations.
U.S. weekly jobless claims came in at 1.416 million for last week, marking the 18th straight week in which initial claims totaled more than 1 million. Economists expected another 1.3 million workers to have filed initial claims for state unemployment benefits, according to Dow Jones. “The surge of COVID cases in the Sun Belt and the stalling out of reopening activities in other states has seemingly caused another round of layoffs that has stymied the nascent labor market recovery,” said Thomas Simons, money market economist at Jefferies, in a note.
MacDailyNews Take: Skittishness is to be expected in times like these. This too shall pass.