Nasdaq finishes worst month since 2008

The Dow Jones Industrial Average slumped more than 900 points Friday as another sharp sell-off led by technology stocks added to Wall Street’s losses in April, leaving the S&P 500 with its biggest monthly skid since the start of the pandemic.

A sharp drop in Amazon weighed on the market after the internet retail giant posted its first loss since 2015. The decline knocked more than $200 billion off Amazon’s market value.

The benchmark S&P 500 fell 3.6% and finished April with an 8.8% loss, its worst monthly slide since March 2020. The Dow slumped

2.8%.

The Nasdaq composite, heavily weighted with technology stocks, bore the brunt of the damage this month, ending April with a 13.3% loss, its biggest monthly decline since the 2008 financial crisis.

Disappointing results or outlooks from Apple, Google’s parent company and Amazon helped fuel the selling this week.

The S&P 500 fell 155.57 points to 4,131.93 Friday.

The benchmark index is now down 13.3% for the year. The Dow dropped 939.18 points to 32,977.21. The Nasdaq slid 536.89 points to 12,334.64.

It’s down 21.2% so far this year. The Russell 2000 slid 53.84 points, or 2.8%, to 1,864.10.

The Commerce Department on Friday reported that an inflation gauge closely tracked by the Federal Reserve surged 6.6% in March compared with a year ago, the highest 12-month jump in four decades and further evidence that spiking prices are pressuring household budgets and the health of the economy.

The latest report on rising U.S. inflation follows a report from statistics agency Eurostat that shows inflation hit a record high in April of 7.5% for the 19 countries that use the euro.

Bond yields rose following the hot readings on inflation. The yield on the 10-year Treasury rose to 2.92% from 2.85%.