NEW YORK–Wall Street stocks fell sharply Thursday as earnings from online listings company Yelp and others disappointed while US data showed only modest growth in consumer spending.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 195.01 points (1.08 percent) to 17,840.52.
The broad-based S&P 500 fell 21.34 (1.01 percent) to 2,084.51, while the tech-rich Nasdaq Composite Index slumped 82.22 (1.64 percent) to 4,941.42.
Yelp plummeted 23.2 percent after forecasting second-quarter sales of $131-$134 million, below Wall Street projections of $138.4 million. Analysts also rapped the company for a weak performance in attracting users.
Michael James, managing director of equity trading at Wedbush Securities, said government data showing consumer spending rose 0.4 percent in March was “a little underwhelming” after Wednesday’s “terrible” report on first-quarter economic growth.
“As you’ve had continually worse economic numbers, that’s only increased the concerns about an economic slowdown,” he said.
Tech stocks were especially weak, with Apple falling 2.7 percent, and Facebook and Google both dropping 2.1 percent.
