The Apple logo is displayed at the Apple store in the Brooklyn borough of New York, Thursday, Jan. 3, 2019. Apple’s shock warning that its Chinese sales are weakening ratcheted up concerns about the world’s second largest economy and weighed heavily on global stock markets as well as the dollar on Thursday. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer)NEW YORK (AP) – Stocks tumbled Thursday on Wall Street, with technology companies suffering their worst loss in seven years, after Apple reported that iPhone sales are slipping in China.
The rare warning of disappointing results from Apple stoked investors’ fears that the world’s second-biggest economy is losing steam and that trade tensions between Washington and Beijing are making things worse. The sell-off also came after a surprisingly weak report on U.S. manufacturing.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged 660 points, or 2.8 percent, and the broader S&P 500 index fell 2.5 percent.
Apple stock plummeted 10 percent, wiping out more than $74 billion of the company’s market value. That’s almost as much as Starbucks is worth and more than Lockheed Martin, Lowe’s, Caterpillar, General Electric or Morgan Stanley.
Other major exporters, including heavy-machinery manufacturers and tech companies like Intel and Microsoft, also took big losses.