Wall Street falters, CrowdStrike slumps on global tech outage
For a Reuters live blog on U.S., UK and European stock markets, click LIVE/ or type LIVE/ in a news window.
Cybersecurity stocks rise after outage
Intuitive hits record high after quarterly results beat
Travelers Companies weighs on Dow
Indexes down: Dow 0.90%, S&P 0.42%, Nasdaq 0.41%
Updated at 11:58 a.m. ET/1558 GMT
By Lisa Pauline Mattackal and Ankika Biswas
July 19 (Reuters) -Wall Street's main indexes slipped on Friday, deepening a sell-off driven by tech stocks and mixed earnings, while investors assessed the impact of a global cyber outage that knocked down CrowdStrike's shares.
Cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike CRWD.O slumped 9.3% after an update to one of its products appeared to trigger an outage that affected customers using Microsoft's MSFT.O Windows Operating System, disrupting businesses across sectors.
Microsoft slipped 0.5%, on track for its worst week in three months after a rout in tech stocks.
Major U.S. airlines ordered ground stops citing communication issues. On the trading front, the Euronext exchange and the London Stock Exchange Group's LSEG.L Workspace news and data platform reported issues, and the FTSE Russell faced disruptions to data.
LSEG later said its data and services were back online, while the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq said markets were operational and working normally.
The disruption comes after two grueling sessions for Wall Street, as investors assessed second-quarter earnings and a move away from megacaps that have primarily driven the equity rally in 2024.
Megacaps were largely mixed on Friday, with Nvidia NVDA.O losing 1.1%, while Alphabet GOOGL.O gained 0.7%.
Chip stocks slipped, with U.S.-listed shares of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing TSM.N down 2.6% and Intel INTC.O dropping 4.9%. The Philadelphia SE Semiconductor Index fell 2%.
Both the Nasdaq and the S&P 500 were on track for their worst week sinceApril.
A softer-than-expected inflation print earlier in July and increasing expectations that Donald Trump could win the U.S. Presidential elections were the catalysts that sparked a broad move away from heavily weighted technology stocks, said Jake Manoukian, Head of U.S. Investment Strategy at J.P. Morgan Private Bank.
"When you had such stretched positioning in tech with those powerful catalysts, that's why you've seen such a historic rotation (to small cap stocks)."
Signaling investor unease, the VIX .VIX - Wall Street's "fear gauge" - was trading at its highest since late April.
Elsewhere, Federal Reserve Bank of New York President John Williams reiterated the Fed remains committed to achieving its 2% inflation target. Comments from the Fed's Raphael Bostic are due later in the day.
Markets have priced in a 25-basis-point interest-rate cut by September and expect two cuts by year-end according to LSEG data.
At 11:58 a.m. ET, the Dow Jones Industrial Average .DJI was down 364.88 points, or 0.90%, at 40,300.14, the S&P 500 .SPX was down 23.29 points, or 0.42%, at 5,521.30, and the Nasdaq Composite .IXIC was down 73.47 points, or 0.41%, at 17,797.76.
Meanwhile, other cybersecurity shares rose, with Palo Alto Networks PANW.O rising 1.7%, and SentinelOne S.N up 4.9%.
Intuitive Surgical ISRG.O rose 8.4% after a second-quarter results beat.
Netflix NFLX.O slipped 0.7% in choppy trading after the streaming giant cautioned third-quarter subscriber additions would be lower than a year earlier.
Oilfield services provider SLB SLB.N rose 4.9% after results, while insurance bellwether Travelers Companies TRV.N lost 6.8%, the biggest Dow decliner, after missingestimates for second-quarter revenue.
S&P 500 companies that have reported second-quarter earnings to date recorded an 85% beat rate.
Declining issues outnumbered advancers for a 2.20-to-1 ratio on the NYSE and for a 1.66-to-1 ratio on the Nasdaq.
The S&P index recorded 27 new 52-week highs and 4 new lows, while the Nasdaq recorded 33 new highs and 66 new lows.
Reporting by Lisa Mattackal and Ankika Biswas in Bengaluru; Editing by Pooja Desai and Devika Syamnath
Related Assets
Latest News
Disclaimer: The XM Group entities provide execution-only service and access to our Online Trading Facility, permitting a person to view and/or use the content available on or via the website, is not intended to change or expand on this, nor does it change or expand on this. Such access and use are always subject to: (i) Terms and Conditions; (ii) Risk Warnings; and (iii) Full Disclaimer. Such content is therefore provided as no more than general information. Particularly, please be aware that the contents of our Online Trading Facility are neither a solicitation, nor an offer to enter any transactions on the financial markets. Trading on any financial market involves a significant level of risk to your capital.
All material published on our Online Trading Facility is intended for educational/informational purposes only, and does not contain – nor should it be considered as containing – financial, investment tax or trading advice and recommendations; or a record of our trading prices; or an offer of, or solicitation for, a transaction in any financial instruments; or unsolicited financial promotions to you.
Any third-party content, as well as content prepared by XM, such as: opinions, news, research, analyses, prices and other information or links to third-party sites contained on this website are provided on an “as-is” basis, as general market commentary, and do not constitute investment advice. To the extent that any content is construed as investment research, you must note and accept that the content was not intended to and has not been prepared in accordance with legal requirements designed to promote the independence of investment research and as such, it would be considered as marketing communication under the relevant laws and regulations. Please ensure that you have read and understood our Notification on Non-Independent Investment. Research and Risk Warning concerning the foregoing information, which can be accessed here.
