The sell-off in US stock markets intensified on Tuesday with all three benchmarks dropping more than 2% as corporate earnings reports began to disappoint.
The Nasdaq was the hardest hit, falling 4% as the discretionary, technology and communication sectors face the brunt off the volatility, down 3% or more.
The Dow Jones and S&P 500 fared slightly better, falling 2.4% and 2.8%, but markets are becoming increasingly impatient with poor outlook statements.
Musk buys Twitter
Twitter (NYSE: TWTR) shares fell by around 3% to US$50 per share, below the US$54.20 bid by Elon Musk which seeks to privatise and refresh the company’s approach.
The deal is set to proceed with the board’s backing marking an end to one of the worst performing tech IPOs.
Microsoft beats
Shares in Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) fell in after hours trading despite delivering a sales and earnings beat, with general revenue increasing 10%.
Importantly, the cloud computing Azure business saw growth accelerate to 46% and the Office 365 unit returned to growth after the first price hike in close to a decade.
UPS reports
United Postal Service (NYSE: UPS) shares fell 3.5% after the company reported an 8% increase in revenue as the e-commerce boom continues but the business is experiencing a weakening in global growth.
US stock market movers
These popular US stocks were among the biggest movers on Tuesday.
- Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) down 12.2%
- General Electric (NYSE: GE) down 10.3%
- Cloudflare (NYSE: NET) down 8.1%
- Block (NYSE: SQ) down 6.4%
- Nike (NYSE: NKE) down 5.8%
- Netflix (NASDAQ: NFLX) down 5.5%
Back home on the ASX, the S&P/ASX 200 (ASX: XJO) is expected to follow this negative lead from US stock markets to open lower this morning. For a round-up of the latest news, check out my ASX 200 morning report.