LinkedIn (LNKD) was mauled, and shares of Salesforce.com (CRM) got slashed in a horrible day for technology stocks on Wall Street.
In all, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 211 points, or 2.1%. The broader S&P 500 fell 35 points, or nearly 1.9%. But technology stocks were the biggest losers with the tech heavy Nasdaq falling 146 points, or nearly 3.3%.
In fact, just six stocks in the Nasdaq 100 rose on Friday. And only two were up more than 1%. The best performer was Symantec (SYMC), which got a $500 million investment from Silver Lake and said it would cut costs. Shares of the company were up 3%.
Friday’s decline left the Nasdaq within growling distance of a bear market, down 16% from its highest point in the past year. Driving down technology stocks recently is the fact they no longer seem immune from what is going on the rest of the economy. While corporate profits started tumbling last year, taking the rest of the market down, technology stocks were largely able to avoid the fall. That was especially true for the so-called FANG stocks (Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, and Google). But now the earnings troubles have spread to technology stocks as well.
USA Today calculated that investors have lost $529 billion on technology stocks this year alone.
Weak earnings from data analytics software company Tableau Software (DATA) sent that company’s shares down nearly 50% on Friday. At the same time, LinkedIn shares fell to their lowest point in three years after the networking site said that its sales would be lower in 2016. The disappointments from those technology companies put pressure on a number of other software companies. Salesforce.com was the worst performing stock in the Nasdaq 100 on Friday. Earlier this week, Apple (AAPL), despite announcing strong earnings for 2015, said sales were likely to slow this year. Amazon (AMZN), too, reported weaker than expected earnings in its fourth quarter.
Even tech stocks are no longer safe.
