US markets end lower on Friday

20 Jul 2024 Evaluate

Magnifying their previous session's losses, the US markets ended lower on Friday amid concerns about the outlook for tech stocks recently weighing on Wall Street. Negative sentiment have been generated by a major IT outage. The operations of major banks, media outlets, hospitals and airlines worldwide were affected due to the widespread outage, which was purportedly caused by an update by cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike (CRWD). Shares of CrowdStrike plunged by 11.1 percent, while shares of Microsoft (MSFT) have also moved to the downside as many of the software giant's users have also been impacted by the issue. Overall trading activity was somewhat subdued, however, with a lack of major U.S. economic keeping some traders on the sidelines.

On sectoral front, Semiconductor stocks saw substantial weakness on the day, dragging the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index down by 3.1 percent to its lowest closing level in over a month. A steep drop by the price of crude oil also contributed to significant weakness among energy stocks, with the Philadelphia Oil Service Index and the NYSE Arca Oil Index falling by 1.4 percent and 1.2 percent, respectively. Considerable weakness was also visible among computer hard stocks, as reflected by the 1.3 percent loss posted by the NYSE Arca Computer Hardware Index. Gold, networking and tobacco stocks also saw notable weakness, while pharmaceutical stocks regained ground following Thursday's sell-off.

Traders also remained on sidelines ahead of a report on personal income and spending in the month of June to be out in next week, as it includes readings on inflation said to be preferred by the Federal Reserve. Investors will also be eyeing earnings news, with Coca-Cola (KO), Alphabet (GOOGL), Tesla (TSLA), and IBM Corp. (IBM) among the companies due to report their quarterly results.

Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 377.49 points or 0.93 percent to 40,287.53, Nasdaq dropped 144.28 points or 0.81 percent to 17,726.94 and S&P 500 was down by 39.59 points or 0.71 percent to 5,505.00.


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