Stocks end mixed after tech sell-off
Wall Street had an uneven finish Friday as investors unloaded their technology shares in favor of energy and financial stocks.
The tech-heavy Nasdaq composite, which has outpaced gains by other U.S. stock indexes this year, fell the most. The Standard & Poor's 500 index closed slightly lower.
The Dow Jones industrial average and the Russell 2000 index of small-company stocks rose to new highs.
U.S. stocks were coming off a two-day winning streak, which included a record high for the Nasdaq on Thursday.
Friday’s tech sell-off centered on the biggest firms in the market: Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet and Facebook. But the biggest loser was chip maker Nvidia, which sank 6.5% to $149.60.
Alphabet, Google's parent company, fell 3.4% to $970.12. Apple slid 3.9% to $148.98. The technology sector fell 2.7%. It remains up 18.5% for the year.
“It's had a good run,” said Scott Wren, senior global equity strategist for Wells Fargo Investment Institute. “People are taking a little money off the table.”
Energy firms went up with the price of crude oil. Helmerich & Payne climbed 5.7% to $53.27. Rig operator Transocean advanced 4.6% to $8.81. Benchmark U.S. crude rose 19 cents to $45.83 a barrel. Brent crude rose 29 cents to $48.15 a barrel.
Small-company stocks received a boost from a stronger dollar following the British election. A stronger dollar tends to benefit smallcap stocks because they tend to have less exposure to international markets than large-cap stocks.
The British pound weakened $1.2724 from $1.2943, losing more than 2 cents against the dollar, after the Conservatives lost their majority in Parliament The dollar rose to 110.20 yen from 109.94 yen. The euro fell to $1.1195 from $1.1222.
Pandora Media rose 1.2% to $8.52 on news that SiriusXM will invest $480 million in the online radio firm. SiriusXM is buying preferred stock and taking a 19% stake in Pandora. Pandora is breaking off a deal with investment firm KKR. SiriusXM slid 3.7% to $5.20.
DuPont Fabros Technology jumped 9.8% to $60.80 after the data real estate investment trust and owner of wholesale data centers was acquired by Digital Realty Trust in an all-stock deal valued at about $7.6 billion. Digital Realty fell 2.9% to $113.32.
VeriFone Systems fell 3.5% to $17.68 after the maker of terminals for electronic payments cut its forecasts and said it’ll sell or restructure several businesses.
Machine learning and analytics firm Cloudera dived 15.6% to $19.41 after its first earnings report as a publicly traded company.
Bond prices fell. The 10year Treasury yield rose to 2.20% from 2.19%.
Wholesale gasoline rose 1 cent to $1.50 a gallon. Heating oil rose 1 cent to $1.43 a gallon. Natural gas rose 1 cent to $3.04 per 1,000 cubic feet. Gold fell $8.10 to $1,271.40 an ounce. Silver fell 19 cents to $17.22 an ounce. Copper rose 4 cents to $2.65 a pound.