US stocks hammered as bears push Nasdaq to 52-week low

US stocks declined sharply on Tuesday amid investor apathy towards equities, with a huge sell-off in tech stocks among other sectors pushing major indexes into the ground.

After trading lower for much of the day, the Nasdaq Composite closed 3.95% in the red. The tech-heavy index, weighed down by losses in all the mega-cap stocks, declined to 12,490.74 to end the session at a new 52-week low.

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With the losses, Nasdaq is now more than 12% down in April, while its decline into bear market territory stood at -23% at the close.

The bloodbath also saw the Dow Jones Industrial Average drop more than 800 points, declining to 33,240.18 at the close. The day’s 2.38% shake-down pushed the Dow more than 4% into the red month-to-date. The S&P 500 fell 2.8% on Tuesday to 4,175.20, bringing month-to-date losses to nearly 8%.

Losses in the stock market have come as investors fret over surging COVID infections in China and continuing uncertainty around the Russia-Ukraine war. Inflation and jitters over central bank monetary policy compound the negative sentiment.

Tech stocks lead sell-off

Among individual stocks, tech stocks saw the most downside across the market. earlier sell-offs had already sunk Tesla by more than 10%, before further quickfire deals pushed it to close more than 12% lower. This happened even as details of Musk’s Twitter bid showed the deal has to close by 24 October.

Apple shares closed 3.7% down, while Amazon shed 4.6% and Facebook parent Meta ended the session 3.2% lower. Microsoft and Google parent Alphabet, which released their earnings reports after the bell, both edged lower. Microsoft lost 3.74% but was up more than 5% in after-market deals thanks to better than expected earnings results.

Alphabet fell 3.6% intra-session before earnings miss on YouTube saw its shares sink 4.30 in post-market trading.

Other big losers were Netflix, which shed 5.48%; Nvidia -5.6%, and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) -6.1%. General Electric fell 10.3%.

Crypto mirrors Wall Street 

The cryptocurrency market also witnessed a sharp dose of downside pressure Tuesday, with billions of dollars wiped off the total crypto market after a 4.7% drop.

Bitcoin, which has struggled around the $40,000 price level, fell below the area once again to hug lows near $38,000. The flagship cryptocurrency lost over $2,000 with over 5% in decline over 24 hours and was trading around $38,430.

Other cryptocurrencies also fell, with Ethereum dipping below $2,900 after losing nearly 5%. Cardano, XRP, and BNB were also down by more than 6%. Meanwhile, Dogecoin, which surged more than 25% as news of Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter emerged on Monday, was down more than 10%.