Facebook is in free fall and pulling the rest of tech with it

Facebook
CEO Mark Zuckerberg delivers the keynote address at Facebook’s F8
Developer Conference on April 18, 2017 at McEnery Convention
Center in San Jose, California.
Justin
Sullivan/Getty Images

• Facebook
  on Wednesday reported disappointing revenue and active-user
  metrics that sent shares into freefall, opening down 18%
  Thursday. 
• Its tech peers — Amazon, Apple, Alphabet, and Netflix —
  also fell.
• The so-called FAANG basket was responsible for the
  S&P 500’s growth in the first half of the year, which would
  have been negative without its gains, according to Bank of
  America. 

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Facebook’s earnings disaster on Wednesday sent
shares plummeting 18% when markets opened Thursday morning,
dragging the rest of its so-called FAANG peers in its wake.

Here’s the scoreboard:

Twitter,
which is set to report earnings ahead of the opening bell on
Friday, was down about 3% in early trading, fueled by criticism
from President Donald Trump who accused the company of “shadow
banning” prominent Republicans.

The selloff also hurt Snap,
which opened down more than 4% Thursday.

Before the earnings report on Wednesday, Facebook had risen 18% since the start of the year as
investors largely shrugged off major scandals related
to the data firm Cambridge Analytica and Russian interference in
the US president election via the platform.

That growth — coupled with other index-topping stocks like
Netflix and Amazon — was solely responsible for the S&P 500’s
gains in the first half of the year, Bank of America said in a
note earlier this month. Without FAANG, the benchmark index would
be down 0.7%.

Amazon
is the only company of the tech basket yet to report, and will
release its quarterly results after the closing bell on Thursday.

Both the Nasdaq 100 and S&P 500 opened in the red about 0.4%
Thursday morning, and were up 15.3% and 5.5%, respectively, since
the beginning of the year.