U.S. Stocks Remain Mostly Lower In Early Afternoon Trading

Stocks moved to the downside early in the session and remain mostly lower in early afternoon trading. With the continued weakness on the day, the Nasdaq and the S&P 500 are adding to the steep drop seen over the two previous sessions.

Currently, the major averages are off their lows of the session but still firmly in the red. The Dow is down 340.50 points or 0.8 percent at 40,324.52, the Nasdaq is down 103.51 points or 0.6 percent at 17,767.71 and the S&P 500 is down 26.12 points or 0.5 percent at 5,518.47.

With concerns about the outlook for tech stocks recently weighing on Wall Street, negative sentiment may have been generated by a major IT outage.

The operations of major banks, media outlets, hospitals and airlines worldwide were affected due to the widespread outage, which was purportedly caused by an update by cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike (CRWD).

“CrowdStrike is actively working with customers impacted by a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts,” the company’s CEO George Kurtz said on X. “Mac and Linux hosts are not impacted.”

“This is not a security incident or cyberattack,” he continued. “The issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed.”

Shares of CrowdStrike have plunged by 9.5 percent, while shares of Microsoft (MSFT) have also moved to the downside as many of the software giant’s users have also been impacted by the issue.

“The underlying cause has been fixed, however, residual impact is continuing to affect some Microsoft 365 apps and services. We’re conducting additional mitigations to provide relief,” Microsoft said on X.

Overall trading activity remains somewhat subdued, however, with a lack of major U.S. economic keeping some traders on the sidelines.

Sector News

Semiconductor stocks continue to see significant weakness on the day, with the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index tumbling by 2.4 percent to its lowest intraday level in over a month.

Considerable weakness is also visible among networking stocks, as reflected by the 1.3 percent loss being posted by the NYSE Arca Networking Index.

Computer hardware and gold stocks are also seeing notable weakness, while pharmaceutical stocks are regaining ground following Thursday’s sell-off.

Other Markets

In overseas trading, stock markets across the Asia-Pacific region moved mostly lower during trading on Friday. Japan’s Nikkei 225 Index dipped by 0.2 percent, while Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index tumbled by 2.0 percent.

The major European markets also moved to the downside on the day. While the German DAX Index slumped by 1.0 percent, the French CAC 40 Index and the U.K.’s FTSE 100 Index slid by 0.7 percent and 0.6 percent, respectively.

In the bond market, treasuries are extending the pullback seen in the previous session. Subsequently, the yield on the benchmark ten-year note, which moves opposite of its price, is up by 4.3 basis points at 4.231 percent.