Stock markets in New York fell again on Friday after the strong rebound the day before. As a result, Wall Street is heading for a negative end to 2022, which will go down in the books as the worst year on the stock exchange since the financial crisis in 2008.
The past year was mainly dominated by the war in Ukraine, the rapidly rising inflation and interest rate hikes due by the central banks to fight inflation.
The technology companies, in particular, suffered this year after the substantial price gains in recent years. As a result, the tech sector saw almost a third of its value evaporate in 2022. On the other hand, the energy sector benefited from higher energy prices and advanced almost 60 percent this year.
Shortly after the start of trading, the Dow Jones index was 0.4 percent lower at 33,100 points. The broad S&P 500 fell 0.5 percent to 3,829 points. The Nasdaq lost 0.9 percent to 10,383 points. On Thursday, the tech gauge managed to gain 2.6 percent.
The Dow is heading for an annual loss of about 8.5 percent after three years of profit in a row. However, the oldest stock index in the United States is doing better than the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq, which lost about 19 percent and 33 percent, respectively, this year.
The Dow and S&P 500 posted strong fourth-quarter gains after three consecutive quarters of losses. However, the Nasdaq is still 0.9 percent in the red for the last quarter of 2022. The tech indicator, therefore, seems to have suffered a loss for the first time since 2001 in four consecutive quarters.
Tesla rose 1.2 percent. The maker of electric cars was put up more than 8 percent on Thursday after the large price losses in recent weeks. However, Tesla stock will fall more than 65 percent in value despite that uptick by 2022.
Other large tech companies such as Apple, Amazon, Google parent Alphabet and Facebook owner Meta Platforms, which also showed a significant increase on Thursday, lost up to 1.8 percent on the last trading day.
Chinese online broker Futu lost almost 20 percent after the company postponed an additional listing in Hong Kong at the last minute. The company did this to “provide more information”. Through Futu, the Chinese and Hong Kongers could trade in shares without being bound by controls. As a result, investors fear that China will tackle the app.