Midday Market Brief: Tech Tanks

We may be at one of those points in the market cycle where we’re not getting much reason to push higher — and too many reasons to hang out at current levels.

The Nasdaq was down 1.4% on Friday in part because of the disappointing guidance from PC giant Dell late Thursday hitting the sentiment for all things technology. Kick in a ho-hum Q1 report from semiconductor company Marvell and it appears to be a good place to pause for an index that had jumped 9% in less than a month.

The same thinking applies to inflation watch: the much-anticipated PCE price index report for April came in exactly as expected — up 0.3% month-over-month. That left the annual rate at an unchanged 2.7%, which isn’t bad but isn’t the 2% target rate the Fed is looking for as a sign that inflation is abating. In other words, when Fed officials say they need to see “more” data before deciding to cut interest rates, it probably needs to look better than this.

Movers & Shakers

These are the stocks making news today:

• Trump Media & Technology Group shares were off 6.5% on Friday after the namesake former president was convicted on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records to cover up a hush-money payment.
• MongoDB stock slid 24% after the database software maker warned that its second-quarter and full-year revenue and earnings would come in well below analysts’ estimates.
• Costco offered another example of a stock that’s had a good run, capped it off with a strong earnings report late Thursday, and investors… sort of yawned. Its shares were 2.4% lower after steadily rising 13% since early May.
• Zscaler, however, bucked that trend. Shares in the cloud-security company jumped 5.1% after a blowout earnings report late Thursday.