Stocks edge up; Facebook sinks again
Stock indexes finished mostly higher after a day of bouncing around Tuesday as retailers, energy companies and banks recovered some of their Monday losses, but technology companies struggled as Facebook dropped again.
Amazon led a rally among retailers, and it passed Alphabet, Google’s parent company, as the secondmost-valuable U.S.-listed company. Energy companies rose with oil prices. Banks rose along with bond yields. Federal Reserve leaders are expected to raise interest rates Wednesday.
Facebook sank after reports that the Federal Trade Commission will investigate its handling of user data and after authorities in the U.S. and Britain demanded answers from the social media giant. That came after reports that Cambridge Analytica, a data mining firm working for President Trump’s 2016 campaign, improperly obtained data on 50 million Facebook users.
Facebook stock regained a portion of its losses by the end of the day, but it has fallen more than 9% this week. Social media companies Twitter and Snap also fell as investors considered the possibility that the government will pass new laws affecting their businesses.
“We don’t know what’s in store for an industry that isn’t really regulated,” said Samantha Azzarello, global market strategist at JPMorgan Exchange Traded Funds.
The gainers Tuesday were mostly larger companies, which suffered the biggest losses Monday. Smaller companies struggled.
Amazon jumped 2.7% to $1,586.51, and Best Buy climbed 2.2% to $70.04. Industrial companies including Caterpillar recovered much of their Monday losses too. Some major tech firms, including Microsoft and Nvidia, rose Tuesday after dropping the day before.
Facebook slid 2.6% to $168.15. The drop in the last two days is the worst for Facebook in two years, and it knocked Facebook from its perch as the fifth-most-valuable publicly traded company in the U.S. Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway moved ahead of Facebook.
Other social media companies also sank: After sharp losses Monday, Twitter plunged 10.4% to $31.35, and Snap slid 2.6% to $16. Alphabet, which fell 3% on Monday, lost an additional 0.4%, closing at $1,095.80.
Oracle dropped 9.4% to $47.05 after releasing a quarterly report that disappointed investors.
BlackBerry climbed 2.8% to $13.08 after the technology company announced a partnership with Microsoft.
Bond prices fell. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note rose to 2.89% from 2.85%. When yields rise, that enables banks to charge higher interest rates on mortgages and other loans.
Banks and other financial companies rose, while companies that pay large dividends lost ground.
Benchmark U.S. crude rose $1.34, or 2.2%, to $63.40 a barrel. Brent crude rose $1.37, or 2.1%, to $67.42 a barrel. Wholesale gasoline rose 4 cents to $1.97 a gallon. Heating oil rose 4 cents to $1.95 a gallon. Natural gas ticked up 2 cents to $2.68 per 1,000 cubic feet.
Gold fell $5.90 to $1,311.90 an ounce. Silver fell 14 cents to $16.19 an ounce. Copper fell 4 cents to $3.04 a pound.
The dollar rose to 106.46 yen from 105.97 yen. The euro fell to $1.2253 from $1.2357.
Germany’s DAX climbed 0.7%. The CAC 40 in France gained 0.6%. Britain’s FTSE 100 closed up 0.3%. Japan’s benchmark Nikkei 225 lost 0.5%, South Korea’s Kospi gained 0.4%, and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng edged up 0.1%.