U.S. trade policy, continued scrutiny of tech companies and another tweet from President Trump about Amazon were in the volatile mix on Monday as the Dow dropped 459 points.
Amazon was down 5.21 percent to $1,371.99 a share, as the Seattle-based tech giant lost more than $36 billion in market value. CEO Jeff Bezos, who saw billions shaved off his net worth last week after a report about how Trump has it out for his company, lost $5.9 billion on Monday, according to Forbes.
Continuing his attacks on Amazon via Twitter, Trump took issue again with the company and whether or not it’s costing the U.S. Postal Service “a fortune” to deliver its packages.
Only fools, or worse, are saying that our money losing Post Office makes money with Amazon. THEY LOSE A FORTUNE, and this will be changed. Also, our fully tax paying retailers are closing stores all over the country…not a level playing field!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 2, 2018
Over the weekend, Trump tweeted about the USPS as well as the Bezos-owned Washington Post, in which he said that the newspaper should be required to register as a lobbyist.
But beyond the president’s itchy Twitter finger, investors were reacting to other concerns, including a potential trade war between the U.S. and China. And Amazon wasn’t the only tech stock to suffer, Facebook (-2.75 percent), Microsoft (-3.1 percent), Google (-2.31 percent) and Netflix (-5.1 percent) all slid. Tesla was also down 5.1 percent after a New York Times report about its autopilot system and a fatal crash in 2016.
Intel also fell 6 percent after a Bloomberg report about Apple planning to switch to its own chips.
The Dow was down as much as 758 points on Monday. The NASDAQ closed down almost 3 percent.