Apple’s worst day of trading has sent shock waves around the world, with Australian stocks also feeling the brunt of the fallout.
Stocks tumbled on Wall Street, with technology companies suffering their worst loss in seven years, after Apple reported that iPhone sales in China are falling.
The rare warning of disappointing results from Apple reinforced investors fears that the world’s second-biggest economy is losing steam and that trade tensions between the US and China are making things worse.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average stood at 22,686.42, down more than 650 points or 2.8 per cent.
The Australian share market has shrugged off some of its earlier losses but fears of a slowdown in China have continued to drag on the local bourse. The benchmark S&P/ASX200 index was down 14 points, or 0.25 per cent, to 5619.4 at 4.15pm AEDT on Friday, following a morning that saw it lower by more than one per cent.
Technology companies and other major exporters, including heavy-machinery companies, also took big losses.
Some of the worst drops were at chipmakers that make components used in smartphones and other gadgets.
Today’s plunge for Apple has made it its worst day of trading since January 2013, and it extends the company’s painful year-end trend into 2019.
Overnight, technology shares led a sell-off across global markets after Apple cut its revenue forecast for the first time in nearly 12 years.
Today’s losses push Apple’s overall market valuation below $US700 billion and behind the market cap of Alphabet to become the fourth most valuable publicly traded US company — down from the top spot just two months ago.
The company has lost $US450 billion in market value since its peak of about $US1.1 trillion last year.
Source: News.com.au
