Wall Street mixed as social media suffers

Stocks

About 40 minutes into the session, the benchmark Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 0.3 percent at 35,720.51, and the broad-based S&P 500 edged up 0.1 percent to 4,552.30.

AFP

October 22, 2021 / 08:11 PM IST

Wall Street stocks were mixed early Friday following a recent rally, as social media companies plunged following disappointing results from Snap.

The latest batch of corporate earnings were mixed on the whole, with American Express and Chipotle Mexican Grill topping estimates.

Investors were monitoring a surge in the share price of a media venture linked to former president Donald Trump that caused trading to be halted shortly after the market opened.

About 40 minutes into the session, the benchmark Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 0.3 percent at 35,720.51, and the broad-based S&P 500 edged up 0.1 percent to 4,552.30.

But the tech-rich Nasdaq Composite Index was down 0.3 percent at 15,159.17.

While early trading was muted, the S&P 500 closed at a record on Thursday and is higher for the week and month, which Patrick J. O’Hare of Briefing.com said was a sign of widespread market optimism.

“In brief, it has been an ‘everything rally’ driven by the same buy-the-dip mantra that hasn’t failed yet and the same fear of missing out on further gains that becomes a precipitant for big gains in a short amount of time,” he said in an analysis.

The earnings miss by Snap radiated outwards to other social media giants like Facebook, which was down 5.1 percent.

Shares of Digital World Acquisition Corp, which is set to merge with Trump’s “TRUTH Social” media startup, surged more than 200 percent, hitting $ 121.99 before being suspended on the Nasdaq.

The special purpose acquisition company’s shares, which closed under $ 10 on Wednesday, jumped 357 percent on Thursday after the merger was announced.