Microsoft Stock Tumbles 12.1% In Worst Day For Company In Years

The software company was alone responsible for more than two-thirds of the S&P 500's drop.

NEW YORK (AP) — The worst day for Microsoft in years is yanking the U.S. stock market away from its record heights on Thursday. Gold and silver prices meanwhile, are swinging sharply following their jaw-dropping runs.

The S&P 500 sank 0.7% after flirting with its all-time high earlier in the morning. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 101 points, or 0.2%, as of 1:29 p.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 1.4% lower.

Microsoft was the heaviest weight on the market by far, and it tumbled 12.1% even though the tech giant reported stronger profit and revenue for the latest quarter than analysts expected. Investors honed in instead on how much Microsoft is spending on investments, whether growth in its Azure cloud business will slow and how long its push into artificial-intelligence technology will take to turn into big profits.

Its stock is on track for its worst day since the market’s COVID crash in 2020, and it was alone responsible for more than two-thirds of the S&P 500′s drop.

Tesla also weighed on the market after falling 2.3%. It delivered a bigger profit for the latest quarter than analysts expected, but the results were sharply lower than from a year earlier. Tesla’s leader, Elon Musk, has been trying to get investors to focus less on its flagging car sales and more on the company’s robotaxis and robots.