Markets stumble as Wall Street sells off Big Tech
CNNCNN — US stocks ended Friday in the red, closing out a lackluster week despite a year of historic highs. The “Magnificent Seven” group of high-performing tech stocks — Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia and Tesla — has accounted for more than half of the gains so far this year as they benefit from intense investor focus on ways to play the artificial intelligence boom, according to S&P Dow Jones Indices. “If a few of these companies fail to beat an elevated bar for positive surprises, there is a risk they would also fall together,” said Keith Lerner, chief market strategist at Truist Wealth. Despite the selloff in equities, there’s really no big news markets are reacting to: Such dramatic market moves have become something of a Christmas week tradition, as buying and selling can have a dramatic effect on stock indexes with most traders on vacation. CNN Business’ story noted the day was “relatively devoid of news.” But the mother of all end-of-year market chaos moments happened in a 10-day stretch to end 2018, when the Dow sank 4,000 points before staging one of the best days on record — a 1,086-point gain — before a roller coaster day the next trading day, which nearly wiped out all those gains.