Stock Market News Today: Dow Jones Falls Following Global Outage

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U.S. stocks fell on Friday as concerns over a global computer outage eased, with Wall Street seeking a recovery after a selloff that saw the Dow end a winning streak and the tech rout continue.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJI) fell about 0.9%, following a decline of more than 1% for the flagship index. The S&P 500 (GSPC) fell 0.5%, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite (IXIC) fell 0.5%.

Stocks are facing weekly losses after a series of volatile sessions that saw technology stocks slide, with AI-focused chip stocks taking the biggest hit. Investors are shifting away from the tech heavyweights that fueled the recent rally and toward small caps, seen by some as benefiting more from interest rate cuts.

Investors were weighing the potential impact of an “unprecedented” outage of computer systems around the world in the early hours of the day, which grounded planes and hit banks, telecoms and media companies, among others. But concerns eased after CrowdStrike (CRWD) announced a fix for the problem, a botched update that affected systems based on Microsoft (MSFT).

CrowdStrike shares fell 20% as the outage spread, but pared losses to about 12% at the open. Shares of Microsoft, which has been working on issues with its Azure cloud services, were down slightly but also recovering.

Meanwhile, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump used his nomination speech Thursday to announce that he would “end the electric vehicle mandate on day one.” His comment comes as the market begins to wake up to the “Trump trade” – the implications of his policies on assets if the former president wins the White House.

Live7 updates

  • Tesla drops 4% after Trump says he will end ‘electric vehicle mandate’

    Electric vehicle stocks were under pressure Friday after former President Donald Trump criticized the Biden administration’s clean energy initiatives, calling them “the new green scam” at the Republican convention.

    Trump said: “I will end the electric vehicle mandate on day one, saving the American auto industry from the total destruction that is happening right now, and saving American consumers thousands and thousands of dollars per car.”

    The comments came despite an endorsement from Tesla (TSLA) CEO Elon Musk. Shares of the electric vehicle giant fell 4% on Friday. Rivian (RIVN) and Lucid (LCID) also fell more than 1%.

    The Biden administration has not imposed a mandate on electric vehicles, but critics point to the Environmental Protection Agency’s auto rules aimed at reducing carbon emissions, introduced in March, as a way to accelerate mass adoption of electric vehicles.

  • Technology and consumer discretionary sectors lead declines

    Nearly every sector in the S&P 500 fell on Friday, with technology (XLK) and consumer discretionary (XLY) stocks leading the declines.

    The materials sector (XLB) also fell 1%. All three major averages were in the red as of 11:45 a.m. ET.

    The health sector (XLV) is the only sector to show a slight increase.

  • Netflix shares rise after quarterly results

    Netflix (NFLX) shares opened higher at their biggest gain since late January before paring gains after the streaming giant reported better-than-expected quarterly results.

    Netflix subscriptions increased 34% quarter-over-quarter, driven in part by the elimination of the base plan in some markets.

    Netflix rose as much as 3% in early trading before giving up those gains.

  • CrowdStrike drops 10% following global IT outage

    CrowdStrike (CRWD) shares fell as much as 10% Friday after an “unprecedented” computer systems outage impacted everything from airlines to hospitals.

    On Friday morning, CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz said a fix had been implemented for the issue.

    On social media platform X, Kurtz wrote: “CrowdStrike is actively working with customers impacted by a flaw found in a single content update for Windows hosts.”

  • Stocks little changed after global computer outage

    Stock markets were little changed Friday as new details emerged about a global computer outage. Wall Street struggled to recover from a selloff that left all major indexes in the red Thursday.

    The Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI) fell 0.2% after falling more than 1% in the previous session.

    The S&P 500 (^GSPC) hovered around the flat line, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC) slipped 0.2%.

    Investors turned away from technology stocks this week, with AI-focused chip stocks leading the way lower.

    Early this morning, investors assessed the impact of an “unprecedented” outage of computer systems running on CrowdStrike (CRWD) and Microsoft (MSFT) platforms.

    George Kurtz, CEO of CrowdStrike, said a patch has been implemented to resolve the issue. He said: “CrowdStrike is actively working with customers affected by a flaw found in a single content update for Windows hosts.”

  • On the phone with: American Express CEO

    Another strong quarter for American Express (AXP) will see its marketing budget increase by $800 million this year to $6 billion, CEO Stephen Squeri told me over the phone.

    He also said he was approaching the second half of the year with more caution because of the elections:

    “If I had been more cautious, I wouldn’t have raised the guidance. I wouldn’t have increased the marketing campaigns and so on. I think we’ll just be consistent and I think that’s the key point here. The Fed will do what they’re probably going to do in September. They’re certainly not going to raise rates, they’re probably going to cut rates, there’s probably going to be another cut before the end of the year. I think that will help, you know, consumer confidence. I think we’ll see what happens in the November election, which I don’t think anybody has any idea about and the reality is this business has been around for 174 years with 30 presidents – we’ll get through whatever we have to get through.”

  • In other news…

    In news unrelated to Trump’s RNC speech, Hulk Hogan ripped his shirt off at the event moments earlier and the Cloudflare (NET) outage wreaked havoc on life (and its stock price) this morning…

    We released Netflix’s results last night, which Yahoo Finance’s Alexandra Canal reports on here. The stock is down slightly in pre-market trading, with some concerns over Q3 subscriber guidance.

    Here’s what Jefferies technology analyst Brent Thill had to say about it:

    “We don’t think so (forecasting is an issue). Given the massive growth in password sharing over the past 12 months (+39 million net adds), a slowdown in subscriber growth should not be surprising. It’s worth noting that the 8 million net adds in Q2 were the strongest second quarter the company has ever recorded, with the exception of Q2 2020. We expect Q4 subscriber growth to accelerate to 7.7 million net adds, given the slate of content (Squid Game S2, NFL Games) and better seasonality in Q4 versus Q3.”

    This makes sense to me.



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