Set off, or certainly encouraged, by a downgrade of Apple (AAPL) to neutral from buy at Mizuho Securities, tech stocks continued Friday’s retreat. But the speed of the drop has been much more measured during the first half of the trading day in New York. The NASDAQ Composite, which had been down 2% earlier, is now off, as of 1:30 p.m. New York time, just 0.83%. The Standard & Poor’s 500 is down 0.34%.
Amazon (AMZN), which fell 3.16% on Friday, was off 1.28% as of 1:30 p.m. Facebook (FB), which fell 3.30% on Friday, was lower by 1.33%. Apple, which dropped 3.88% on Friday, was off 3.21% after the downgrade.
The market is more anxious today but it doesn’t seem anywhere near panic country. The CBOE S&P 500 Volatility Index (VIX), was up another 10% today (10.75% as of 1:30 to be exact) on top of a greater than 10% gain on Friday, but that’s a relatively restrained move considering that what is known as the “fear” index has been trading near record lows and that this index can tack on moves of 30% to 40% in a day when investors get really fearful.
It’s certainly tough to tell but so far this still looks like a restrained consolidation in the the tech sector after these stocks went parabolic in recent weeks. (For more on this take and what parabolic means and why it’s dangerous, see by Trick or Trend post from Saturday. You can access that post on my paid JubakAM.com site for free if you sign up for my current 30-day free offer. Hint. Hint.)
