On the first trading day of 2021, stocks of major media and tech companies slumped as investors assessed the economic impact of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and U.S. political uncertainty.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 2.2% in midday trading Monday, dropping 677 points to about 29,928 — below the 30,000-point threshold it had crested in December. The S&P 500 index dropped 2.3% and the tech-focused Nasdaq composite was off 2.4%. Losers in the media sector included Comcast, whose shares dropped 5%, as well as Netflix, whose stock was down more than 4%. Also declining were Disney , Sony , Lionsgate and ViacomCBS . Shares of Discovery, which launched its Discovery Plus streaming service on Monday, were up slightly in midday trading.
Big tech companies that saw their stock prices decline included Apple , Amazon , Facebook and Alphabet, parent company of Google . Shares of Spotify were down 2.4% and Roku fell 3.4% — two streaming companies that saw huge run-ups in their stock prices in 2020. One of the few gainers in the market Monday was AT&T, up 1% in midday trading, after analysts at Raymond James upgraded the stock from “market perform” to “outperform,” citing in part the potential for WarnerMedia’s HBO Max to deliver strong subscriber growth in the coming year.