Wall Street Today: DJIA, S&P 500, Nasdaq Comp Fall as Techs Like MSFT, PLTR, ORCL, CRWV Slide

The S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite sank for a third straight session Thursday, while the Dow-30 fell as well as Big Techs like Microsoft, Palantir, CoreWeave and Oracle continued to sell off – as did gold, silver and cryptocurrencies.

The $Nasdaq Composite Index (.IXIC.US)$ shed 363.99 points (1.6%) to a 23,540.59 close, while the $S&P 500 Index (.SPX.US)$ lost 84.32 ticks (1.2%) to 6,798.40 and the $Dow Jones Industrial Average (.DJI.US)$ gave up 592.58 points (1.2%) to 48,908.72.

The Nasdaq Comp and S&P 500 have fallen every day since Tuesday and are both now negative for 2026 as a whole.

The DJIA has lost ground in two of the past three sessions, but remains slightly positive for the year-to-date period.

Macro

All three indexes fell Thursday amid a continued sell-off for Big Techs.

The day's major decliners included $IonQ Inc (IONQ.US)$ (down 13.9%), $NEBIUS (NBIS.US)$ which shed 10.3%), $CoreWeave (CRWV.US)$ (9.5% lower), $Super Micro Computer (SMCI.US)$ (off 8.6%), $Oracle (ORCL.US)$ (off 7%), $Palantir (PLTR.US)$ (down 6.8%) and $Microsoft (MSFT.US)$ (5% weaker).

$Alphabet-A (GOOGL.US)$ also became the latest "Magnificent Seven" stock to fall despite beating analyst estimates for quarterly earnings. The search giant lost 0.5% despite better-than-expected results.

Meanwhile, $Amazon (AMZN.US)$ fell 4.4% ahead of earnings due out after the close. (Shares later lost another 9% in after-hours trading following the numbers' release.)

Adding to the market's woes, gold and silver resumed their downward march after partly rebounding in recent days from last week's huge sell-off.

$Silver Futures (MAY6) (SImain.US)$ lost as much as 15.3% to a $74.305-an-ounce session low in New York Comex trading on Thursday, while $Gold Futures (APR6) (GCmain.US)$ gave up 2.9% at their bottom to $4,805.00 per ounce.

Similarly, major cryptocurrencies fell by double-digit percentages.

$Bitcoin (BTC.CC)$ lost 14.8% to $62,580.10 as of shortly before 4 p.m. New York time, while $Ethereum (ETH.CC)$ gave up 15.4% to $1,831.91, $Solana (SOL.CC)$shed 16.2% to $78.11 and $Ripple (XRP.CC)$tumbled 23.5% to $1.18.

In economic news, a trio of reports showed seemingly bad signs for the U.S. job market.

The Labor Department reported that initial jobless claims came in at a seasonally adjusted 231,000 in the week ended Jan. 31 – up 22,000 from the week before and worse than the 212,000 economists had forecast.

Separately, the department's Job Openings, Layoffs and Turnover Survey (JOLTS) showed 6.54 million available jobs in January – the lowest number since September 2020.

And lastly, outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas reported that American employers announced 108,435 layoffs in January – the worst January reading since 2009.

Moo-vers

The "Magnificent Seven" stocks took their cue from the broader market and almost all fell on Thursday.

$Microsoft (MSFT.US)$ and $Amazon (AMZN.US)$ led the way lower among the Mag-7 with their previously mentioned declines of 5% and 4.4%, respectively. Microsoft ended at $393.67 after Stifel downgraded the software giant to a "Hold" from a "Buy" and cut its price target to $392 from a previous $540.

Other Mag-7 stocks to lose ground included $Tesla (TSLA.US)$(off 2.2%), $NVIDIA (NVDA.US)$ (1.3% weaker), $Alphabet-A (GOOGL.US)$ (which lost an aforementioned 0.5%) and $Apple (AAPL.US)$(0.2% softer).

Only $Meta Platforms (META.US)$ managed to rise among the Mag-7, adding 0.2%.

Elsewhere in the market, Tuesday's noteworthy percentage gainers included:

-- $Kelly Services-B (KELYB.US)$, up 251.2%. The staffing firm soared in apparent delayed reaction to word Friday that it had agreed to drop a "poison-pill" anti-takeover provision and give four board seats to Hunt Equity. Hunt recently acquired 92.2% of the firm's Class B common stock.

-- $Lumentum (LITE.US)$, which added 8.4%. The optical-networking firm rose for a second day following fiscal Q2 revenue and adjusted-earnings beats and better-than-expected fiscal Q3 guidance.

-- $NIO Inc (NIO.US)$, up 5.9%. The electric-vehicle maker gained ground after pre-announcing expectations of a record $29 million-$100 million in Q4 operating profit.

Conversely, Thursday's major percentage decliners included:

-- Multiple cryptocurrency-related stocks, which fell on cryptos' big Thursday losses. Decliners included $Strategy (MSTR.US)$ (down 17.1%), $Bitmine Immersion Technologies (BMNR.US)$ (off 14.3%), $Coinbase (COIN.US)$ (13.3% weaker), $Applied Digital (APLD.US)$ (11.7% weaker), $IREN Ltd (IREN.US)$ (11.5% lower), $Robinhood (HOOD.US)$ (which gave up 9.9%) and $Circle (CRCL.US)$ (which shed 8.8%).

-- Select space stocks, which fell in an apparent risk-off move after some two months of choppy but mostly rising prices. Thursday's major losers included $Redwire (RDW.US)$ (down 12.3%), $AST SpaceMobile (ASTS.US)$ (off 9.9%) and $Rocket Lab (RKLB.US)$ (9.3% weaker).

--Recent high-flying but volatile stocks, which apparently sank due to the market's risk-off sentiment. Names that saw big drops included $USA Rare Earth (USAR.US)$ (12.5% lower) and $Ondas (ONDS.US)$(down 12.4%).

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