AT&T, Discovery Slide for a Second Day

An afternoon drop led by big technology stocks left major market indexes broadly lower on Wall Street Tuesday. The S&P 500 lost 0.9%, with most of those losses coming in the last hour of trading. Apple, Facebook, and Google’s parent company all lost 1% or more. Walmart rose after reporting strong results driven by higher online sales. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 267.13 points, or 0.8%, to 34,060.66, and the Nasdaq fell 75.41 points, or 0.6%, to 13,303.64. Declines in financial, communications services, and energy companies outweighed gains in technology and healthcare stocks, the AP reports.

AT&T had the biggest loss in the S&P 500 a day after the company said it would offload its recently acquired media businesses including HBO and CNN into a new company with assets from Discovery Communications. Its shares fell 5.8%. They were down 0.7% Monday. Discovery, which dropped 5.1% Monday, fell another 1.6% Tuesday. AT&T only finished acquiring Warner, which includes HBO, CNN, DC Comics, and other iconic properties, in 2018 and its new CEO is pulling an about-face on his predecessor's decisions. Walmart rose 2.2% after the giant retailer's results beat estimates as online shopping saw significant growth from a year ago, driven in part by Americans buying online in the pandemic.

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