Stocks Suffer Biggest Drop in More Than Two Years on Inflation Fears

Todd Spangler
·2 min read

Media and tech stocks across the board felt the pain Tuesday amid a market-wide selloff, fueled by a fresh indicator that higher-than-expected inflation is continuing to put a damper on economic growth.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average shed 1,276 points, down 3.94%, to close the session Tuesday at 31,104.97. The S&P 500 index dropped 4.32%, while the tech-centric Nasdaq Index sank 5.16%. The drops represented the biggest one-day declines for U.S. stocks since June 2020.

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The losses on Wall Street came after the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics released data for August 2022, showing that the Consumer Price Index for the month increased 8.3% year-over-year (down only slightly from 8.5% in July and from the four-decade-high 9.1% in June). The jump in the CPI was despite a 10.6% drop in gas prices for the month, which failed to offset rising prices for rent, healthcare, food, and electricity and natural gas.

Among the biggest losers were Netflix, which fell 7.8% to $218.13 per share, and Meta, parent company of Facebook and Instagram, which plunged 9.4% to $153.13 per share.

Media stocks that dropped Tuesday included Paramount Global (-7.13%), AMC Networks (-6.71%), Comcast (-6.25%), Lionsgate (-4.64%), Disney (-3.98%), Fox Corp. (-3.76%) and Warner Bros. Discovery (-2.7%).

Among other big tech stocks, Amazon fell -7.1% and Apple and Alphabet both declined -5.9%.

One of the few stock to end higher Tuesday was Twitter: The social media company’s shares ended the day up 0.8%, to $41.74 per share, after stockholders formally approved the $44 billion deal to sell the company to Elon Musk. However, Musk wants to terminate the deal — under which he originally agreed to buy Twitter for $54.20/share — and is headed toward a court showdown.

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