Tuesday, April 20, 1999
Nasdaq plunges on tech sell-off
The Associated Press
NEW YORK — Investors dumped technology shares Monday, pummeling the Nasdaq Composite Index with its second-biggest point drop ever. The wave of selling in near-record volume more than wiped out a 270-point gain in the Dow industrials, snapping a five-day string of record highs.
“I think it was the decimation of everything tech, everything Internet, everything health care,” said Larry Wachtel, a market analyst at Pru dential Securities.
The technology-heavy Nasdaq Composite plunged 138.43, or 5.6 percent, to 2,345.60. The only time the index had a bigger one-day point drop was Aug. 31, when it slid 140.43 points, or 8.6 percent.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average, at one point in the afternoon up 271.85 points, squandered those gains and closed down 53.36 at 10,440.53.
It was a $292 billion hit to investor portfolios. That was the drop Monday in Wilshire Associates Equity Index, which measures the market value of all the stocks on the New York Stock Exchange, American Stock Exchange and Nasdaq Stock Market.
“If you owned a big winner this year, you got wacked today,” Mr. Wachtel said. “They just got around to (selling) the extraordinary winners of 1999. It had the ring of inevitability.”
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Nasdaq plunges on tech sell-off
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