Tumbling tech stocks drag market down

Wall Street’s euphoria NEWYORK— tookabreakThursday,assteeplosses in technology stocks dragged the rest of themarketdownwith them.

Itwas the biggest decline for the U.S. stock market since early June, when investors were dealing with a surge of coronavirus infections in places like Florida, Texas and Arizona. Thereseemedtobenoexplicit catalystforthesell-off,witheconomic data coming in roughly where the market had expected and no companiesissuingforebodingwarnings.

That said, the market felt due for a breather, investors said. Both the S&P500andNasdaqhitrecordhighs just the day before. Prior to Thursday, theS&P500had risen nineout of the previous 10 days.

BigTechstockslikeApple,Amazon and Facebook have made massive gains this year. Investors have been bettingthosecompanieswouldcontinue postinghuge profits as people spend even more time online with theirdevices. Marketwatchershave been questioning recentlywhether those gainswereoverdone. Apple is stillup64.7% for the year, andAmazon is up 82.3%.

“There’s really very little tojustify (thesebigstocks’upwardmove)other than euphoria,” said Mark Hackett, chief of investment research at Nationwide.

Hackettalsonotedthemarkethas “embeddedveryoptimisticassumptions” about the virus’s impact on theeconomy, aswellasonprospects for Congress and the White House coming up with another economic relief package.

Thegovernmentreportedthatthe number of Americanswho applied forunemploymentbenefits fell last weekto881,000, slightlybetterthan what economists had expected.