At the close today, January 11, the Standard & Poor’s 500 was off 0.66%. The Dow Jones industrial Average was lower by 0.29%. The NASDAQ Composite had fallen 1.255 and the NASDAQ 100 had dropped 1.55%. The small cap Russell 2000 was down just 0.03%. The iShares MSCI Emerging Markets ETF (EEM) finished with a loss of 1.33%.
As you might conclude from those results from the indexes, the big culprit in today’s retreat was technology, especially big technology stocks. Apple (AAPL) was down 2.32%. Microsoft (MSFT) dropped 0.97%. Alphabet (GOOG) lost 2.24%. Amazon (AMZN) fell 2.15%. Facebook (FB) was the biggest loser in the group with a drop of 4.01%.
That the losses were driven by a retreat in these big tech shares (although my no means exclusive to them–Coca-Cola (KO), for example, dropped 1.72%) augers wells for a recovery in the second part of the week as investors do what they did last week and look to buy “bargains” among the big tech market leaders that “everyone knows you have to own.”
Last week ended with stocks setting new all time highs.
Facebook may be an exception to last week’s pattern if investors and traders decide that the social media company is likely to suffer long term from the turmoil surrounding the posts of outgoing President Donald Trump and other right-wing posters. Twitter (TWTR), which has banned President Trump completely, was down 6.41% today.
