U.S. Stocks Fall Ahead of Tech Earnings as China’s Covid Outbreak Weighs
2022.04.25 17:56
By Liz Moyer
Investing.com — U.S. stocks mostly fell on Monday ahead of a raft of earnings from big tech companies this week and amid fears about a global economic slowdown as Covid-19 cases continue to crop up in China.
At 10:27 AM ET, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 265 points, or 0.8%, while the S&P 500 fell 0.8% and the NASDAQ Composite was up 0.5%.
China reported dozens of new cases of Covid-19 in the capital city of Beijing, sparking fears of another round of lockdowns after the country has struggled to contain an outbreak in Shanghai.
Tech stocks were on everyone’s mind, too. This week’s earnings include reports from Apple Inc (NASDAQ:AAPL), Amazon.com Inc (NASDAQ:AMZN), Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT), Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR) and Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL) (NASDAQ:GOOG), the parent of Google. Twitter shares rose nearly 4% on Monday after reports the social media company was close to accepting a $43 billion buyout offer from Tesla Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA) CEO Elon Musk.
Elsewhere, Coca-Cola Co (NYSE:KO) shares were up 0.1%, giving back earlier gains after reporting better than expected results. Activision Blizzard Inc (NASDAQ:ATVI) shares fell 0.8% after low demand for its “Call of Duty” game led to sales that missed expectations.
Economic fears also weighed on the energy sector. The price of Crude Oil WTI Futures fell 5.4% to $96 a barrel, while the price of Brent Oil Futures crude, the international benchmark, fell 5.3%, to just over $100 a barrel. Gold Futuresalso fell 1.9% to $1896 an ounce.
Stocks are starting the week trying to rebound from a rout on Friday that sank the Dow 900 points, its worst day of the year so far. Since the beginning of January, the Dow is down 8%, while the S&P is down 11% and the Nasdaq is down 18%.
