coronavirus

The 5 Biggest Tech Companies Lost More Than $400 Billion in Value on Thursday

Shares of Apple plunged 9.88%

In this March 12, 2020, file photo, a trader has his head in his hand on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange.
AP Photo/Richard Drew

The five biggest tech firms, AmazonAppleAlphabetFacebook and Microsoft, lost a combined $416.63 billion in value as the markets continued to crater on coronavirus fears and economic uncertainty.

Shares of Apple plunged 9.88%, Facebook fell 9.30%, Alphabet dropped 8.2%, Amazon fell 7.98% and Microsoft dropped 9.48%, as investors continued to worry about the spread of coronavirus and its potential impact on the economy. They had been among the biggest contributors to the market’s extended rally that lifted the S&P 500 to a record just last month. 

It was a bigger drop than on Monday, when the big five lost a combined $320 billion before recovering some of those losses during the week.

Investors seem to be most concerned about how much consumers and businesses will cut back on spending if the economy goes into a recession. There are additional concerns about supply chain constraints on product manufacturing. Apple in February warned that it does not expect to meet its second-quarter forecast for revenue, for example.

All five are now down for the year: Facebook is down 24.7%, Google down 17.0%, Apple down 15.5%, Microsoft down 11.8%, and Amazon down 9.3%.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average plummeted 10% or 2,352.60 points to 21,200.62, the biggest one-day plunge since the 1987 “Black Monday” market crash. The S&P 500 fell 9.5% to 2,480.64, likewise the worst day since 1987. And the Nasdaq Composite fell 9.4% to 7,201.80.

— CNBC’s Fred Imbert, Ari Levy and Thomas Franck contributed to this report.


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