Wall Street is off to a brutal start to the week, with the Nasdaq dropping more than 3% a few hours into trading on Monday morning, as the markets continue to grapple with President Trump’s tariffs and his criticism of Fed Chairman Jerome Powell.
The tech-heavy Nasdaq was down 3.29%, the S&P 500 was down 2.97%, and the Dow Jones had dropped 2.84% by 12:15 E.T. on Monday. Several major media and tech companies like Apple and Disney have taken hits to their share price as part of the downturn — more on that in a minute — and from a macro standpoint, all three major indexes are down 10% or more since the president announced his “liberation day” tariff plan on Apr. 2.
Since then, the markets have been compared innumerable times to riding a rollercoaster, with wild daily swings becoming the norm the past few weeks. The Trump Administration on Friday signaled it was getting closer to working out a trade deal with China, although nothing concrete has been announced.
The markets appear to have wanted a bit more clarity by the time trading started on Monday, especially as earnings season has kicked off. Last week, Netflix reported sales of $10.5 billion in the first quarter — up 12% year-over-year. Netflix’s stock is up 2.15% on Monday to $994 per share. A number of other big tech and media companies, including Meta, Spotify, Comcast and Disney, are set to report their first quarter earnings over the next few weeks.
Something else that likely did not boost investor confidence on Monday was the president slamming Powell as a “major loser” who should cut interest rates.
Apple, the world’s most valuable company, is down 3.05% on Monday. Since Apr. 2, the tech giant has seen $700 billion shaved from its market cap, as investors have worried about the tariff on Chinese imports hitting Apple devices. Amazon is down 3.49% on Monday and has had its valuation drop from $2.07 trillion to $177 trillion since the start of April. And Google, which was found to have an illegal monopoly for the second time in less than a year last week, was down 2.88% a few hours into trading.
Meta, meanwhile, is down 3.68%; The parent company of Facebook and Instagram is currently facing its own antitrust lawsuit from the government.
Here is how a number of other media and tech stocks are performing:
Comcast: -1.82%
Roku: -0.74%
Amazon: -3.49%
Disney: -1.52%
WB Discovery: -3.80%
Snap Inc.: -2.84%
Paramount: -0.87%
Spotify: -1.80%
Live Nation: -2.80%
As for earnings, check TheWrap on Thursday morning for a look at how Comcast’s Q1 went, then check back on Thursday afternoon for a look at how Alphabet, Google and YouTube’s parent company, performed.
The post Media, Tech Stocks Slump as Tariff Uncertainty Hits Earnings Season appeared first on TheWrap.
