Big Market Oops – Nasdaq & SP500 Plunge

Market News – Last week, two giant stock market scoreboards, the Nasdaq 100 and SP 500, took a nosedive, hitting their worst numbers in months. Why? Well, there’s a bunch of stuff stirring the pot.

Firstly, the cost of borrowing money in the U.S. (something the brainy folks call “yields“) is skyrocketing, and that’s freaking everyone out. Plus, there’s a lot of scary stuff happening in the Middle East, adding extra worry.

Meanwhile, companies are in the middle of sharing their report cards (called “earnings reports”), and it’s been a mixed bag. Banks and tech giants seem to be doing okay, but that’s not enough to restart the stock market party.

Digging deeper, those borrowing costs are shooting up because the U.S. economy is doing surprisingly well, and the money guardians (the Federal Reserve) want to keep things from getting too wild. They’re playing it cool, trying to keep prices stable, making life tough for anything considered a gamble, like stocks.

On the world stage, things got heated when a group called Hamas hit Israel with some attacks, and Israel hit back hard. This drama’s got the whole world on edge, making the stock market even jitterier.

So, with these money borrowing costs climbing and global tensions high, our stock market scoreboards, the S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100, are in hot water. They’re looking for a lifeline from big U.S. companies, which need to pull some seriously impressive numbers out of their hats to calm things down.

Even though they’ve hit a rough patch, tech stocks have been the cool kids of 2023. But to keep up their star status, they’ve gotta prove they can keep raking in the dough and growing their businesses big time. If not, they’re gonna wake up to some serious headaches.

Next week’s big deal? Everyone’s waiting to hear from the tech heavyweights — Alphabet (that’s Google’s parent company), Microsoft, and Amazon. They’re some of the biggest players, and folks are whispering about how much they’ve made. Google’s expected to show earnings of $1.45 per share with big-time revenue, Microsoft might reveal they’ve earned $2.65 per share, and Amazon could be sitting pretty with $0.58 per share. But these are all guesses — we gotta wait and see what’s up.