Wall Street Rollercoaster Continues as Tech, Media Stocks Plunge and China Targets Hollywood

Investors may want to wear a seatbelt and helmet before checking their accounts at this point, because the daily stock moves are fast and violent.

Wall Street on Thursday took another body blow, with the three major indexes all dropping more than 2.50%, as euphoria over President Trump pausing his reciprocal tariffs a day earlier gave way to uncertainty about the U.S.-China trading relationship.

The S&P 500 dropped 3.46%, the Nasdaq declined 4.31% and the Dow Jones decreased 2.50% on Thursday. At one point, the S&P 500 was flirting with triggering a circuit breaker — where the market pauses for 15 minutes after a 7% decline — when it was down more than 6% during midday trading; it would have been the first circuit breaker since COVID sent markets tumbling in March 2020.

A number of tech and media stocks were hard-hit on Thursday, including:

Meta: -6.74%
Google: -3.53%
Fox Corp.: -3.86%
News Corp.: -2.25%
Amazon: -5.17%
Comcast: -4.26%
WBD: -12.53%
Netflix: -2.57%
Roku: -7.19%
Snap Inc.: -11.50%

Apple, meanwhile, was down 4.24% on Thursday. The world’s most valuable company had shed about $700 billion from its market cap in since President Trump shared his tariff plan last week, even after jumping 15% on Wednesday. The company, led by CEO Tim Cook, even flew in planes full of iPhones and other devices in recent days to avoid being hit by the new tariff on Chinese imports.

The Trump Administration increased its new tariff on Chinese imports to 145% on Thursday — one day after the tariff was raised from 104% to 125%. China’s communist government has responded by hitting American imports with an 84% tariff, while it is also looking to “moderately reduce” the number of U.S. films it shows. President Trump laughed off the movie reduction on Thursday, saying he’s “heard of worse things.”

Thursday’s down day for Wall Street comes after the markets blitzed higher on Wednesday, following President Trump’s announcement he was pausing his reciprocal tariffs on most countries for 90 days; the Nasdaq closed Wednesday with its second-best single-day gain ever, while the S&P 500 posted its biggest day since 2008.

President Trump, in a Truth Social post at 12:45 a.m. ET on Thursday, said “What a day, but more great days coming!!!”

The president on Thursday said he was considering reversing course on the 90-day pause, if countries do not strike deals with the U.S. soon; at the same time, he said he would consider extending the 90-day pause if decent progress is made. Stay tuned.

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