Apple plunges on Wall Street – Amazon shares rocket

Technology stocks continued their strong rise on Wall Street on Friday.

On Thursday, the US stock markets saw a strong technology rally, which has continued on Friday in Asia and Europe. For example, South Korea’s Kospi index rose a record 18 percent during the day.

The broad-based S&P 500 index was up 0.3 percent after the stock market opened, and the technology-focused Nasdaq was up 0.8 percent. The Dow Jones, known as the flagship index, rose 0.2 percent.

A wave of selling in the technology sector pushed Wall Street stock markets into a significant decline at the beginning of the week, which continued the weak July for technology stocks. However, Florian Ielpo, a portfolio manager at Lombard Odier Investment Managers, estimated to the news agency Bloomberg that the worst of the selling wave is probably now behind us.

“Valuation levels are now more reasonable than a month ago, although not yet cheap. This is not the end of the artificial intelligence theme, but rather the end of its easiest phase,” Ielpo estimated.

Amazon posts strong results

Technology giant Apple and online shopping and cloud services company Amazon released their latest quarterly reports after the stock markets closed on Thursday.

Apple’s shares opened down more than nine percent on Friday. The company’s revenue growth only narrowly exceeded high expectations, and its services business, China sales figures and future revenue forecast all fell short of analysts’ forecasts.

Amazon, on the other hand, reported stronger-than-expected results, and its shares rose 13 percent. The company’s revenue and earnings per share clearly exceeded forecasts. The rise was driven in particular by the tremendous growth of the AWS cloud service.

Semiconductor and chip companies also rose strongly on Friday. For example, AMD’s shares rose six percent and Micron’s rose six percent. Intel rose seven percent.