New Telegraph 
Wall Street’s main indexes slipped on Friday, deepening a sell-off driven by tech stocks and mixed earnings, while investors assessed the impact of a global cyber outage that knocked down CrowdStrike’s shares.
Cybersecurity firm, CrowdStrike (CRWD.O), slumped 9.3 per cent after an update to one of its products appeared to trigger an outage that affected customers using Microsoft’s (MSFT.O).
Microsoft slipped 0.5 per cent, on track for its worst week in three months after a rout in tech stocks. Major US airlines ordered ground stops citing communication issues.
On the trading front, the Euronext exchange and the London Stock Exchange Group’s (LSEG.L). LSEG later said its data and services were back online, while the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq said markets were operational and working normally.
The disruption comes after two grueling sessions for Wall Street, as investors assessed second-quarter earnings and a move away from megacaps that have primarily driven the equity rally in 2024.
Megacaps were largely mixed on Friday, with Nvidia (NVDA.O), losing 1.1 per cent, while Alphabet (GOOGL.O), gained 0.7 per cent. Chip stocks slipped, with U.S.- listed shares of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing down 2.6 per cent and Intel (INTC.O), dropping 4.9 per cent.
The Philadelphia SE Semiconductor Index fell two per cent. Both the Nasdaq and the S&P 500 were on track for their worst week since April.
A softer-than-expected inflation print earlier in July and increasing expectations that Donald Trump could win the U.S. Presidential elections were the catalysts that sparked a broad move away from heavily weighted technology stocks, said Jake Manoukian, Head of U.S.
Investment Strategy at J.P. Morgan Private Bank. “When you had such stretched positioning in tech with those powerful catalysts, that’s why you’ve seen such a historic rotation (to small cap stocks).”
Elsewhere, Federal Reserve Bank of New York President John Williams reiterated the Fed remains committed to achieving its 2% inflation target.
Comments from the Fed’s Raphael Bostic are due later in the day. Markets have priced in a 25-basis-point interest-rate cut by September and expect two cuts by year-end according to LSEG data.
