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Nov 01, 2024

Tech stock sell-off wipes out Wall Street’s October gains

Peter Wells and Jennifer Hughes in New York Simply sign up to the US equities myFT Digest -- delivered directly to your inbox. US stocks gave up all of their gains for October as a sell-off in tech

Peter Wells and Jennifer Hughes in New York

Simply sign up to the US equities myFT Digest -- delivered directly to your inbox.

US stocks gave up all of their gains for October as a sell-off in tech heavyweights on Thursday produced Wall Street’s worst daily drop in almost two months.

In the final trading session of the month, the S&P 500 ended down 1.9 per cent while the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite closed 2.8 per cent lower.

Big Tech stocks led the losses, with Microsoft dropping 6.1 per cent — its biggest one-day drop in two years — after its quarterly earnings outlook disappointed. Facebook parent Meta, which also reported on Wednesday, slid 4.1 per cent.

Dec Mullarkey, managing director at SLC Management, said that after a recent run of strong gains, tech stocks “seem to be hitting the buzz saw of high expectations”.

“AI growth was never going to be a connect-the-dots procession,” he added. “There will be setbacks as adoption, production and shipments don’t neatly happen on cue.”

The market stumble came ahead of earnings reports from two other trillion-dollar tech groups, Apple and Amazon. The iPhone maker sank in after-hours trading after it told investors it had modest growth in its smartphone sales, but Amazon rose sharply on the strength of its cloud computing unit.

The moves in the S&P 500 and Nasdaq, which marked the biggest daily drops for the indices since September 6, left them down 1 per cent and 0.6 per cent, respectively, for the month.

The October decline broke a five-month winning streak for the S&P 500, during which time US stocks had reached record highs on a combination of expectations that the Federal Reserve would begin to ease monetary policy and data signalling the economy was on course for a “soft landing”.

After Thursday’s slide, the S&P 500 and Nasdaq stood about 2.5 per cent and 3 per cent respectively below their peaks.

The market moves come just days before Tuesday’s US presidential election, when Kamala Harris and Donald Trump have vied to convince voters that they offer better stewardship of the economy and in turn a better outcome for markets.

Investor jitters have been rising as the election has neared and the prospect of next week’s Fed meeting has added to general tensions. Treasury yields and the dollar have risen to their highest levels in about three months.

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The yield on the policy-sensitive two-year Treasury edged up to 4.16 per cent, leaving it up 0.52 percentage points and on course for its biggest monthly increase since February 2023.

The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury was on track to register its biggest monthly rise since September 2022, with a 0.5 percentage point increase to about 4.28 per cent.

The dollar, measured against a basket of six major currencies, has gained 3.3 per cent in October and was on track for its biggest monthly advance since April 2022.