Stock Market Today: Wild Friday Features More Woes for Tech
Big Tech stocks Apple (AAPL), Amazon.com (AMZN) and Microsoft (MSFT) all declined on a wobbly 'quadruple witching' Friday.
You are now subscribed
Your newsletter sign-up was successful
Want to add more newsletters?
Delivered daily
Kiplinger Today
Profit and prosper with the best of Kiplinger's advice on investing, taxes, retirement, personal finance and much more delivered daily. Smart money moves start here.
Sent five days a week
Kiplinger A Step Ahead
Get practical help to make better financial decisions in your everyday life, from spending to savings on top deals.
Delivered daily
Kiplinger Closing Bell
Get today's biggest financial and investing headlines delivered to your inbox every day the U.S. stock market is open.
Sent twice a week
Kiplinger Adviser Intel
Financial pros across the country share best practices and fresh tactics to preserve and grow your wealth.
Delivered weekly
Kiplinger Tax Tips
Trim your federal and state tax bills with practical tax-planning and tax-cutting strategies.
Sent twice a week
Kiplinger Retirement Tips
Your twice-a-week guide to planning and enjoying a financially secure and richly rewarding retirement
Sent bimonthly.
Kiplinger Adviser Angle
Insights for advisers, wealth managers and other financial professionals.
Sent twice a week
Kiplinger Investing Weekly
Your twice-a-week roundup of promising stocks, funds, companies and industries you should consider, ones you should avoid, and why.
Sent weekly for six weeks
Kiplinger Invest for Retirement
Your step-by-step six-part series on how to invest for retirement, from devising a successful strategy to exactly which investments to choose.
Friday was expected to be an active day for stocks, and, on that front, it didn't disappoint.
Today was a "quadruple witching" day, in which index futures, index options, stock options and individual-stock futures all expire at once, which sometimes leads to heavy volume and erratic moves in parts or all of the market. In this case, the major indices flipped from early gains to deep losses, then recovered somewhat before closing in the red. The Dow Jones Industrial Average finished 0.9% lower to 27,657.
Friday continued a brutal stretch for tech. The S&P 500's technology sector, as measured by the Technology Select Sector SPDR Fund (XLK, -1.7%), has declined 9.5% since the start of September. Apple (AAPL, -3.2%) has declined 17% this month, Amazon.com (AMZN, -1.8%) is off 14.4% and Microsoft (MSFT, -1.2%) is off 9.8%.
From just $107.88 $24.99 for Kiplinger Personal Finance
Become a smarter, better informed investor. Subscribe from just $107.88 $24.99, plus get up to 4 Special Issues
Sign up for Kiplinger’s Free Newsletters
Profit and prosper with the best of expert advice on investing, taxes, retirement, personal finance and more - straight to your e-mail.
Profit and prosper with the best of expert advice - straight to your e-mail.
Other action in the stock market today:
- The Nasdaq Composite dropped 1.1% to 10,793, putting it down 8.3% for September.
- The S&P 500 also fell 1.1% to 3,319.
- The Russell 2000 was the strongest of the major indices, slipping 0.4% to 1,536.
Too Rocky for Your Tastes? Build a More Diversified Core
As we detailed in our A Step Ahead newsletter today, the tech sector might not be a bubble waiting to pop, but it is a particularly frothy area of a generally expensive market that's still ripe for profit-taking.
"The equity market's recent volatility reflects uncertainty surrounding the pandemic, the presidential election and fiscal policy," says Thomas Mantione, managing director, UBS Private Wealth Management. "The acceleration of digital, virtual and e-commerce trends has caused valuations in the tech sector to expand. But as we've seen, the tech sector is not immune from the volatility that could be caused by the lack of fiscal policy response to COVID-19 and uncertainty surrounding the 2020 election."
Given the ubiquity of tech in the major indices, most investors are absorbing the pain, but those with highly diversified portfolios haven't felt the pinch as badly. If you're in need of a broader swath of holdings, it's only a few clicks away.
We've recently shown investors some of the best target-date fund families, which offer products that manage stocks and bonds for you over the course of decades. If you feel like being a little more active, however, exchange-traded funds like those in our Kip ETF 20 can help you achieve almost any goal.
But in some cases, you can get all of the building blocks for a diversified portfolio from a single fund family. Here, we detail five of the best iShares ETFs on offer that you can combine to create a dirt-cheap investing core that covers thousands of stocks and bonds.
Kyle Woodley was long AMZN and MSFT as of this writing.
7 Best 5G Stocks for the Communication Revolution
-
Nasdaq Leads a Rocky Risk-On Rally: Stock Market TodayAnother worrying bout of late-session weakness couldn't take down the main equity indexes on Wednesday.
-
Quiz: Do You Know How to Avoid the "Medigap Trap?"Quiz Test your basic knowledge of the "Medigap Trap" in our quick quiz.
-
5 Top Tax-Efficient Mutual Funds for Smarter InvestingMutual funds are many things, but "tax-friendly" usually isn't one of them. These are the exceptions.
-
Nasdaq Leads a Rocky Risk-On Rally: Stock Market Today
Another worrying bout of late-session weakness couldn't take down the main equity indexes on Wednesday.
-
AI Unwind Takes 2% Off the Nasdaq: Stock Market TodayMarkets are paying more and more attention to hyperscalers' plans to spend more and more money on artificial intelligence.
-
I'm a 55-Year-Old Dad. Here’s How My 28-Year-Old Daughter Showed Me That AXP Is Still a Solid InvestmentAmerican Express stock is still a solid investment because management understands the value of its brand and is building a wide moat around it.
-
Dow Adds 1,206 Points to Top 50,000: Stock Market TodayThe S&P 500 and Nasdaq also had strong finishes to a volatile week, with beaten-down tech stocks outperforming.
-
Stocks Sink With Alphabet, Bitcoin: Stock Market TodayA dismal round of jobs data did little to lift sentiment on Thursday.
-
Nasdaq Slides 1.4% on Big Tech Questions: Stock Market TodayPalantir Technologies proves at least one publicly traded company can spend a lot of money on AI and make a lot of money on AI.
-
Stocks Close Down as Gold, Silver Spiral: Stock Market TodayA "long-overdue correction" temporarily halted a massive rally in gold and silver, while the Dow took a hit from negative reactions to blue-chip earnings.
-
If You'd Put $1,000 Into AMD Stock 20 Years Ago, Here's What You'd Have TodayAdvanced Micro Devices stock is soaring thanks to AI, but as a buy-and-hold bet, it's been a market laggard.
