Facebook Leads Nasdaq Lower As Whistleblower To Appear Before Congress, Markets Tank On Economic Jitters

Facebook led a rout of tech stocks and broader market indexes Monday amid outages at its core services and news that the whistleblower behind a recent series of damning stories in the Wall Street Journal will testify before Congress tomorrow.

Facebook shares were down by $324 or more than 5% as the Nasdaq dropped 340 points. The DJIA shed about 400 points. Facebook’s mounting woes were compounded by economic jitters that hit tech stocks the hardest. Twitter and Snap plunged by more than 6%, Roku by 5%. Spotify was off 4% and Apple, Amazon and YouTube parent Google dipped about 3%. Netflix was dragged lower as well, losing 2.6%.

The sharp downturn comes amid jitters over supply chains and ahead of a a week full of economic data on inflation and the pace of the labor market recovery. Lawmakers haven’t yet agreed on a solution to raise the debt limit and avert a potential government default, a situation that Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warned last week could create a financial crisis and potential recession.

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'No Time To Die' & 'Venom: Let There Be Carnage' Rain Cash On AMC, Cinemark & Imax

Thousands of Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook Messenger users in the U.S. and several others countries have been affected by outages, according to DownDetector and other monitors. Several initial press reports indicated the issue seemed to be related to Domain Name System, or DNS, server issues.

Facebook has been under fire after series of investigative articles by the Wall Street Journal based on leaked documents by a former product manager, Frances Haugen, who went public on 60 Minutes last night. The data she provided showed Facebook had internal data showing its products were damaging to users in various ways but kept quiet. She is scheduled to testify on Capitol Hill Tuesday amid a drumbeat of criticism among lawmakers of big tech.

Among media, the best performers were exhibition related after the huge weekend opening of Venom: Let There Be Carnage. Cinemark up more than 6%), Marcus, National CineMedia and Imax (up over 3%) are all popping. However, The largest exhibitor, AMC Entertainment, which has had a massive runup this year thanks to retail investors, was, down 4%.

Elsewhere, Endeavor shares are down a hefty 8.4%. Disney is off 1.5% and ViacomCBS 1.8%. Comcast is down 1%. Fox, an outlier, is up 1.49%.

IATSE said this afternoon that members voted overwhelmingly to approve a nationwide strike against film and TV productions if last-ditch negotiations with the AMPTP fail to produce a fair deal.

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