What investors need to know about Friday’s selloff

Stocks had a rough day — and a rough week. – Getty Images/iStockphoto

A remarkable two-month sprint higher for the major U.S. stock-market indexes encountered its first major hiccup on Friday, as the Nasdaq Composite plummeted more than 1,121 points — its biggest one-day point drop on record, according to Dow Jones Market Data.

That translated to a 4.2% decline for the Nasdaq COMP, the biggest in percentage-point terms since April 10, 2025, data showed. A 2.6% drop for the S&P 500 SPX on Friday was its worst since Oct. 10.

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Taken together, Friday’s selloff wiped $1.8 trillion of market value from members of the S&P 500, according to Dow Jones Market Data.

The tumult wasn’t confined to stocks: Prices for bonds and crude oil CL00 BRN00 also fell. The 10-year Treasury yield BX:TMUBMUSD10Y rose 4 basis points, or 0.04 percentage point, to 4.518%, FactSet data showed. Bond yields and bond prices move inversely to one another.

Many investors blamed Friday’s strong May jobs data for inspiring the carnage in markets. President Trump took to Truth Social to remark on how strange it seemed that good news about the U.S. economy would be received so poorly by market participants.

“With a great Jobs Report, like just announced, stocks should go up, not down. That’s the way it was for 200 years. Growth does not mean inflation!” Trump said in a post on Truth Social.

Nevertheless, investors were worried that a labor market on the mend would make it more difficult for the Federal Reserve to justify leaving interest rates on hold.

Expectations for more rate cuts this year evaporated months ago. Since the start of the Iran conflict, markets have been steadily pricing in a higher likelihood of rate hikes in 2026, according to CME Group data.

Also read: The Fed may already be too late in hiking rates — which is bad news for these borrowers

Coming on the heels of a handful of promising economic reports, the May jobs data appeared to confirm that, rather than weakening, the labor market was picking up strength.

“Yields up, oil down — that means investors are scared that the Fed is going to hike,” said Jose Torres, an economist at Interactive Brokers.

A parabolic rally

Since the start of the second quarter, hot memory and optical stocks have led a powerful, but narrow, rally. Advances in model capabilities helped revive investors’ flagging faith in the potential of artificial-intelligence technology, while hyperscalers’ ongoing commitment to the data-center buildout helped inspire a massive supply bottleneck in high-bandwidth memory chips and other key components.

In light of this, Wall Street analysts have revised their earnings expectations higher, providing some fundamental justification for the rally.

Micron Technology shares MU had risen 170% between the end of March and Thursday’s close, making Micron the 12th company to achieve a market capitalization of more than $1 trillion.

But the parabolic rally in semiconductors started to run out of steam earlier this week, after the latest earnings from Broadcom AVGO left a bad taste in investors’ mouths.

“It’s never quite obvious what the catalyst is, but I think we can point to Broadcom as being a change in mindset,” said Steve Sosnick, chief market strategist at Interactive Brokers, in an interview with MarketWatch. “Guidance came up short. … I think it punctured a lot of people’s belief that any company that might benefit from AI spending was effectively bulletproof,”

Stocks were already sliding on Friday afternoon when the Financial Times reported that Meta Platforms META was contemplating a big equity raise, similar to a major deal recently announced by Alphabet GOOGL GOOG.

Don’t miss: First Google, now Meta? Big Tech may increasingly sell stock to bankroll $820 billion AI boom.

“The recent equity offering by Alphabet, along with the potential for Meta to follow suit, could materially change the investment narrative around these companies if they begin issuing significant amounts of stock to fund their capital-expenditure needs,” said Michael Kramer, founder at Mott Capital Management.

“Over the next several quarters, these companies are likely to face a difficult choice: finance their spending needs by taking on more debt and issuing additional equity, or reduce capital expenditures. Neither outcome is likely to be particularly favorable for stock prices,” Kramer added.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA fell 165.68 points, or 0.3%, this week to 50,866.78, its biggest weekly drop since April, FactSet data showed. The Nasdaq Composite lost 1,263.19 points, or 4.7%, this week to 25709.43, its worst week since April of last year.

The PHLX Semiconductor Index SOX fell 10.3% Friday, its worst one-day decline since March 16, 2020, Dow Jones Market Data showed. That translated to a $1.2 trillion wipeout for semiconductor names, the largest industry group in the S&P 500.

To be sure, there were isolated pockets of strength. The consumer-staples sector XX:SP500.30 rose 1.6%, and shares of Coca-Cola KO gained 3.5%, according to FactSet.