The Nasdaq closed Friday down more than 4% from where it opened Monday and almost 1% for the day, marking a rough start to 2022 for several entertainment and tech stocks.
Along with the Nasdaq, the S&P 500 is having a bumpy beginning to the new year, down 0.4% at close on Friday and -1.8% from Monday’s open. The Dow ended the day flat, slipping just 0.33% overall for the week.
Among the notable companies that took a hit Friday were Netflix (down 2.21% from where it opened), Roku (-6.92%), Google parent company Alphabet Inc .(-0.53%), Amazon (-0.43%) and Comcast (-0.91%).
On the flip side, Apple closed up 0.099%, AT&T up 0.67%, Discovery up 16.87%, Disney up 0.61%, ViacomCBS up 7.88% and Fox Corp. up 1.54%.
On Thursday, Bloomberg reported that “roughly four in every 10 companies on the Nasdaq Composite Index have seen their market values cut in half from their 52-week highs.”
The mixed results come after the U.S. Labor Department reported Friday that while the country’s unemployment rate has fallen to 3.9%, significantly fewer jobs were added in December 2021 than analysts had estimated. The 199,000 jobs added to the economy marked the fewest jobs added for the calendar year.
A chunk of the week’s damage to high-valuation tech stocks was done Wednesday, when minutes from the Federal Reserve’s last policy meeting indicated that earlier and faster rate hikes would be coming in 2022 in an attempt to fight inflation.
All of this comes ahead of companies preparing to release their fourth-quarter and full-year 2021 earnings over the next few months, reports that investors are sure to be looking at even more closely while they prepare to buy and sell this year.
