Financial Associated Press, April 30 (Editor Zhao Hao) On Friday (April 29), the three major US stock indexes opened low and walked low, closing sharply lower.
By the close, the Nasdaq Composite was down 4.17 percent at 12,334.64 points;
The S&P 500 fell 3.54% to 4,135.80 points, and the Dow Jones fell 2.77 percent at 32,977.21.
At present, the US stock market is facing a series of unfavorable factors, including the Fed's tightening monetary policy expectations, higher US Treasury yields, inflation at nearly 40-year highs, and the Russian-Ukrainian war that lasted for more than two months.
Market pricing shows traders now expect the Fed to raise rates by 50 basis points in May and 75 basis points in June, making rate-sensitive tech stocks a target for a concentrated sell-off.
On a monthly basis, the technology-based NASDAQ fell 13.26 percent in April, its worst monthly performance since the 2008 financial crisis, with the index falling 17.35 percent in October 2008; the S&P 500 falling 8.8 percent, its worst month since the outbreak of COVID-19 in March 2020; and the Dow Jones fell 4.91 percent.
Emily Roland, co-chief investment strategist at John Hancock Investment Management, said, "We no longer have hyper-accommodative monetary policy, no more fiscal stimulus and speculative risks. Now we're starting to see what the fundamentals of tech companies actually look like. ”
Aashish Vyas, investment director at Resonanz Capital, said: "When fundamentals play an important role again, market volatility will rise and it looks like we are indeed in a systemic shift. ”
Many investors are increasingly worried about a recession, with the U.S. yesterday reporting a 1.4 percent drop in first-quarter GDP, the worst performance in two years since the outbreak began. Jim Paulsen, chief investment strategist at Leuthold Group, noted that recession fears are escalating on a massive scale.
Michael Shaoul, chairman of Marketfield Asset Management, wrote that the market could shift from a long and painful "correction" to a more troubling situation, "There was also a sharp decline in March 2020, but the market recovered quickly at that time." ”
Hot stock performance
Big tech stocks were all lower, with Apple down 3.66 percent, Microsoft down 4.18 percent, Google down 3.72 percent, and Meta down 2.56 percent.
Amazon closed down 14.05 percent, its biggest one-day drop since 2006.
Chip stocks also moved lower en masse, (in order of market capitalization) NVIDIA down 6.24%, Broadcom down 4.24%, Intel down 6.94%, Texas Instruments down 3.18%, Qualcomm down 5.74%, AMD down 4.60%.
New energy vehicle stocks also all closed down, with Tesla down 0.77%, Lucid down 4.29 percent and Rivian down 6.03 percent.
Chinese stocks moved higher as the Nasdaq Golden Dragon rose 4.46 percent against the trend, closing at 6,705.62.
Most of the popular Chinese stocks rose higher, with Manbang up 20.60%, Pinduoduo up 13.54%, Alibaba up 6.80%, JD.com up 6.66%, Tencent Music up 4.42%, Baidu up 3.00%, Xiaopeng Auto up 2.20%, Ideal Auto up 1.40%, and Weilai down 1.36%.
Company news
Musk sold a total of 5.23 million shares of Tesla stock on April 28 at a price of $822.68 to $902.85 per share, worth about $4.5 billion, according to documents released Friday by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Musk cashed out more than $8.5 billion in total this week's sell-off.
Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger said in an interview with the media on Friday that the chip shortage will last longer than expected and is expected to continue through 2024. Kissinger said he had previously predicted that the global chip shortage would continue into 2023, but it is currently expected to continue even longer, as chipmakers struggle to buy enough manufacturing equipment and increase production to meet demand, and the development of many factories will face greater challenges.
According to data released friday by market research firm Counterpoint Research, shipments of the global smartphone market in the first quarter of this year fell by 7% year-on-year to 328 million units, and smartphone shipments fell by 12% month-on-month. Samsung Electronics shipped more than 74 million smartphones in the first quarter of this year, ranking first in the world. Apple's global smartphone shipments were flat year-on-year, at 59 million units, ranking second.