By
Godfrey Benjamin
April 23rd, 2024
The Dow Jones dipped by 130 points as tech stocks plummeted during the Thursday’s volatile trading session. Pharmaceutical stocks are doing better these days.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed Thursday’s trading session with about 130.40 points lower as other tech stocks trailed the bearish downtrend. Thursday was a volatile trading day with most tech stocks on Wall Street closing low amid varying news about the coronavirus vaccine as well as the stimulus package talks.
With the 130.40 dips of the 30 stock index Dow Jones (INDEXDJX: .DJI), representing about 0.5% drop to 27,901.98, a retrace from its four-day upward surge. While the Dow Jones recorded this dip, tech-laden Nasdaq Composite (INDEXNASDAQ: .IXIC) dropped by about 10% from its previous all-time high falling 1.3%, or 140.19 points, to 10,910.28. The S&P 500 (INDEXSP: .INX) also joined the plummeting trail as it dropped 0.8%, or 28.48 points, to close at 3,357.01.
Market analysts had opined that these corrections were pertinent as the market performance had towed a fast lane which is largely unsustainable. “The market had gone up too much, too fast and valuations got to a point where that was more noticeable than before, so now you’re seeing the market correct a bit,” said Tom Martin, senior portfolio manager at GLOBALT. He added that “the question now is whether this is the kind of range we’ll be in for the rest of the year.”
Tech Stocks and Dow Jones
As the Dow Jones dipped, other stocks in the market also experienced a red closing. Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook Inc (NASDAQ: FB) lost 3.3% to close at $254.82. E-commerce unicorn Amazon.com Inc (NASDAQ: AMZN) also closed 2.3% lower. Netflix Inc (NASDAQ: NFLX) closed 2.8% lower. Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ: GOOG) (NASDAQ: GOOGL) dropped 1.7% while Apple Inc (NASDAQ: AAPL) and Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT) were both down at least 1%.
In a mind-boggling twist, the shares of Snowflake Inc (NYSE: SNOW), a cloud data warehousing firm that surged about 111% in its Initial Public Offering (IPO) debut on Wednesday also experienced a 10.39% drop on Thursday.
While the overall outlook on Wall Street appears bearish, some stocks stood out adding gains at the end of the trading day. While e-commerce giant Amazon (AMZN) saw a plunge, Walmart Inc (NYSE: WMT) saw a 0.32% increase to close at $139.69. General Electric Company (NYSE: GE) also recorded a 4.44% increment, even though this gain begins to erode in the pre-market.
COVID-19 Vaccine News Impact
The entire market has seen a frenzy with different timelines postulated for the release of a working COVID-19 vaccine. With many of the COVID-19 candidates particularly those in Operation Warp Speed at the late stage of their clinical trials, expectations mount for a vaccine to be approved before the end of the year. While Moderna Inc (NASDAQ: MRNA) CEO Stephane Bancel stated that the firm will know if its COVID-19 Vaccine candidate mRNA-1273 will be effective by November, Pfizer Inc (NYSE: PFE) has revealed that Americans may begin to get its vaccine shots before the end of the year.
Following this news, the shares of Pfizer (PFE) closed 0.11% higher. Other pharmaceutical companies including AstraZeneca Plc (LON: AZN) and BioNTech SE(NASDAQ: BNTX) also saw 0.58% and 1.12% gains respectively.