NASDAQ Composite started the week on a back foot as it finished on the negative territory on Monday as the North Korea launched four ballistic missile tests off its coast that sowed fear to investors while Snap’s major downturn clawed down the index.
Double Punch
The tech-heavy index received a double punch form the missile test and the slump form the newest tech stock as it dropped 21.58 points, or 0.4%, to finish at 5, 849.17. The index could have closed lower but it was able to erased 43-point deficit before the session ended.
The nuclear-armed nation, North Korea, conducted the four ballistic missile test to send another challenge to the new US President Donald Trump, with three of its landings provocatively hitting the waters of Japan, one of America’s strongest allies.
The missile experiment was also a respond to the Seoul-Washington annual joint military exercise last week that frustrated Pyongyang, the largest city and the capital of North Korea.
With the news, markets felt some nerves and investors stepped on cautious mode, making some profit-takings in play, which sent the three major equities in US including the Dow and S&P 500 on a bearish end.
Another driver of the Monday’s pullback in the NASDAQ benchmark was the majir downturn in the shares of tech-stock, Snap. On Thursday, it pulled off a 44% surge at $24.48 in its opening day in Wall Street, debuting as the biggest tech IPO since 2012, but yesterday, the stock tanked over 12% to settle at $23.77.