Tech losses again drag down markets

Big technology and internet companies came under heavy selling pressure again on Monday, leading to broad losses across the stock market. The Dow Jones Industrial Average briefly fell 500 points.

Apple, Microsoft and Amazon, the most valuable companies on the market, sustained some of the worst losses. Facebook, another longtime investor darling that has been falling out of favor, also fell sharply.

Mark Hackett, chief of investment research at Nationwide Investment Management, said investors are dumping the high-profile technology companies that have dominated the market recently. He said investors are picking companies based on traditional profit and revenue figures instead of the kind of user growth figures favored by tech companies.

“These things had outperformed the S&P by a mile over the last three years,” he said, but that’s changed now. “On good days they’re not the leaders, and on bad days they’re the laggards.”

The jittery trading came after two days of gains last week as investors hoped that the U.S. and China were moving closer to settling their costly trade fight, which has been a major uncertainty for the market. Those hopes faded after the two countries clashed at a Pacific Rim summit over the weekend.

A steep loss for Boeing, a major exporter which would stand to suffer greatly in a protracted trade war, weighed heavily on the Dow. Boeing gave up 4.8 percent, but is still one of the bestperforming stocks in the 30-stock index. Apple fell 4.2 percent on renewed worries that iPhone sales could slow, Microsoft lost 3.6 percent and Amazon gave back 5.2 percent.

High-dividend stocks like real estate companies and utilities, which investors favor when they are fearful of market turmoil, held up better than the rest of the market.

Nissan sank after its chairman was arrested on misconduct charges.

The disagreements between the U.S. and China at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting left investors feeling pessimistic about the prospects for a deal that would end the trade tensions between the world’s two largest economies. For the first time in almost 30 years, leaders at the summit could not agree on a joint declaration on world trade.

Talks between the U.S. and China are continuing ahead of a meeting between Chinese President Xi Jinping and President Donald Trump planned for the G-20 summit later this month.

The S&P 500 index of technology companies has now plunged 13.5 percent since the end of September.