The Hottest Stocks Posted the Day's Biggest Declines Entrepreneurial companies had a dramatic day on Wall Street.
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Some of the year's hottest stocks posted the day's biggest declines, as a broad sell-off in the stock market gathered steam throughout the day.
The newly launched Entrepreneur Index of 60 leading companies, run by their founders or founding family members, was down 4.41 percent, closing at 161.3. Only three of the 60 stocks in the index rose and 15 had declines of more than 5 percent. The transaction volumes for virtually all stocks in the index were well above average.
Technology stocks, the hottest segment of the equity market this year, were among the hardest hit. Netflix was down 8.38 percent after nearly doubling since the beginning of the year. Other tech companies in the index that fell sharply included Alphabet, Amazon, NVIDIA, Salesforce.com and Adobe. All of them were down by more than 5 percent.
Twitter posted the steepest decline on the day, falling 8.5 percent. The stock has been falling since the social media giant disclosed in its second quarter earnings release that the number of active users on its network had fallen. The company's ongoing battle with bots and trolls is to blame. The automated accounts make it hard to evaluate user and advertising metrics for the network. Twitter shares are down 45 percent since peaking in late July.
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Iconic clothing manufacturer Ralph Lauren also had a major dressing down on the day, falling 8.44 percent. Trade concerns with China appear to be a big factor in the decline. LVMH Moet Hennessey Vuitton recently issued warnings that Chinese customs officials were cracking down on consumer purchases of western luxury brand items in the country. The shares of brands like Ralph Lauren fell sharply as a result.
Still another factor hitting the market was the lowering of global economic growth estimates by the International Monetary Fund yesterday. The IMF cited turmoil in emerging markets as the reason for downgrading its estimate for this year. That helped drive down the price of crude oil by 3.15 percent. Hess Corp, the only oil and gas producer on the Entrepreneur index fell by 7.41 percent. It is still up 40 percent so far this year.
JM Smucker was one of only three stocks in the index to buck the extremely bearish trend. The food products manufacturer was up 1.54 percent for the day. The other two stocks posting gains were discount retailer Dollar Tree (1.65 percent) and home products retailer Bed Bath and Beyond (0.36 percent). Investors could be looking for value as all three stocks were down more than 15 percent on the year. They also all have high exposure to the U.S. economy, which continues to outpace growth in the rest of the world.
