But the mayhem started beneath the surface in Feb 2021.
By Wolf Richter for WOLF STREET.
Stocks on Friday turned Thursday’s blistering beautiful rally into a miserable dead-cat bounce. And it put some marks into the sand.
The S&P 500 Index dropped 3.6%, the worst drop since June 2020. The index is down 14% from its 52-week high and has turned red year-over-year (-1.2%). For the first four months this year, the index is down 13.3%, the third-crappiest beginning of a year, after 1932 (-28%) and 1939 (-17%).
The real fireworks took place at the Nasdaq, whose composite index plunged 4.2% and is now down 23.9% from the its intraday high in November, and down 11.7% year-over-year. For the month of April, it dropped 13.5%, the worst month since October 2008, which was the month following the Lehman bankruptcy.
The Dow Industrial Average dropped 2.8% today and is down 10.7% from its high. And it’s now also red for the past 12 months, at -2.6% year-over-year.
The Russel 2000 fell 2.8% today, is down 24.2% from its high last November, and is now 17.7% in the hole for the 12-month period.
This chart shows the percentage change of the four indices over the past 12 months since April 29, 2021, with all four indices ending today below the red line (data via YCharts):
The biggest stocks are falling apart.
Today’s hero was Amazon [AMZN], which plunged 14% today. Last night, it had reported a big loss, slowest revenue growth since the dotcom bust, and rip-roaring expenses, topped off by nauseating guidance. It is now down 34% from its closing high in July 2021, despite a huge bout of financial engineering announced in March: a 20-for-1 stock split and a massive share-buyback program, just now when it lost money:
The biggest stocks that were able, by their sheer heft, to cover up the mayhem beneath the surface after February 2021 have now let go.
I threw in the N’s because they were once part of the infamous FANGMAN stocks., percent change from high, and date of closing high:
| $ today | % today | % from closing high | Date of closing high | |
| Netflix | 190.95 | -4.6% | -72.5% | 29-Oct-21 |
| Meta | 200.47 | -2.6% | -48.0% | 1-Sep-21 |
| NVIDIA | 186.40 | -6.2% | -44.5% | 29-Nov-21 |
| …….
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