Stocks Lose Big on Historic Wall Street Anniversary
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Hemera/Thinkstock(NEW YORK) — On Friday, the 25th anniversary of the Black Monday crash of 1987, markets tanked. Poor earnings reports from three companies in the Dow Jones industrial average — Microsoft, General Electric and McDonalds — sent indexes down sharply Friday, marking a sour end to an otherwise strong week in the stock market.
The Dow closed down 205 points at 13,343. Still, the index managed to close out the week with a 0.1 percent gain. The Nasdaq lost 67, a 2.2 percent loss, and closed at 3,006. The S&P gave up 24 points, closing at 1,433.
Chad Morganlander at Stiefel Nicolaus says the global economy is growing too slowly right now to sustain anything more. It was a particularly rough week for technology companies like IBM, Intel and Google, whose earnings reports raised questions about ads on mobile devices. First Google dropped nine points on Thursday. On Friday, Microsoft took a smaller dip, sliding 1.8 percent after reporting a 22 percent drop in first-quarter net income.
Investment strategist Doug Roberts from Capital Research says investors are wondering if the tech industry on the whole is suffering.
“Shall we say the slowdown in the emerging markets in China and also in Europe, is starting to affect these multi-national tech companies?” Roberts asks.
The drop may be hard for investors to take. Friday stocks turned out the worst day in nearly four months, but wasn’t nearly as bad as what happened a quarter of a century ago on Black Monday when the Dow closed down more than 500 points, down 22 percent for the session. It would be the equivalent of a 3000 point drop today.
Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio