Election chaos and Friday’s tech outage are taking the market on a wild ride
The Dow fell 378 points, or 0.9%, on Friday as the tech outage continued to rattle investors. The S&P 500 and the Nasdaq Composite were down 0.7% and 0.8%, respectively.
This has been a destabilizing week for US stocks. It’s just the latest session to see stocks oscillating this week, reaching new highs before swinging back down again.
The S&P 500 posted a new record high on Tuesday. By Thursday, the index had logged its worst two-day decline since April — when Iran launched an attack on Israel. On Wednesday, the Nasdaq had its worst day since 2022.
Investors have struggled to find their footing in recent days as they contend with an assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump, rising odds that President Joe Biden will drop out of the election, attacks on Big Tech and chipmakers from both sides of the aisle and a global computer outage affecting airports, banks, hospitals and other businesses.
