A broad-based sell-off in stock markets Monday pushed stock prices of major media and tech companies lower, as investors worried that a U.S. recession may be looming.
As of 3 p.m. ET Monday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 2.7%, the S&P 500 was off 3.3% and the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite had dropped 4%. That came after big declines in Asian and European markets and on the heels of last Friday’s U.S. jobs report that showed “significantly slower hiring, with unemployment rising to its highest level in nearly three years,” per the New York Times.
Media stocks seeing declines included Warner Bros. Discovery (-3.9%), Disney (-1%), Paramount Global (-3.6%), Comcast (-1.6%) and Netflix (-3.2%). Large-cap technology stocks were also hit: Apple dropped 6.6%, Meta was down 3.3%, Alphabet was down 5% and Amazon declined 4.6%. Apple’s share price was also under pressure after Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway revealed Saturday that it had sold nearly half of its stake in Apple during the second quarter.
That said, most U.S. stocks had recovered somewhat from even steeper losses earlier in the session.
On Disney, Morgan Stanley analysts issued a note Monday lowering earnings estimates for the media conglomerate citing concerns with its theme parks business. Disney is scheduled to report earnings for the June quarter on Wednesday (Aug. 7) before the market opens.
“There are enough data points at this point to take a more cautious view of Disney’s parks business in FY25,” Morgan Stanley analyst Ben Swinburne wrote, adding that “much of this appears priced” into the stock given the drop in Disney’s share price since its last quarterly earnings report in May. Morgan Stanley lowered estimates for Disney’s FY25 adjusted EPS by 4.5% and lowered estimates for FY26 by about 1.5% “as a more bullish film outlook partially offsets Parks.”
Source Agencies
