US stock market: Tesla shares plummet, Big Tech with heavy losses

The shares of the largest tech companies in the USA – of the “Magnificent Seven” – were at the center of a veritable sell-off on Monday, causing the technology-heavy Nasdaq 100 index to suffer its biggest daily loss since 2022. While the share price of Elon Musk's electric car company Tesla plummeted by more than 15 percent, Nvidia, Alphabet, Meta and Apple also fell by more than 4 percent each. The losses for Amazon and Microsoft were only slightly lower, at around 2 and 3 percent respectively. Overall, the Nasdaq 100 fell by 3.81% to 19,430.95 points. This is also due to concerns that the USA could plunge into a recession.

Economic fears in the USA

Just weeks after Donald Trump took office as US President, the wind has finally changed on the US stock markets. At the turn of the year, it looked as though the new US government would be able to fulfill a number of Big Tech's wishes and further boost share prices. This expectation has yet to be fulfilled, quite the opposite. Considering Trump's erratic tariff policy, which introduces tariffs, then adjusts them, then cancels them and then raises them again, there is now economic anxiety in the world's largest economy. When asked on Sunday, Trump refused to rule out the possibility of a recession for his country.

Before the particularly massive losses for Tesla shares on Monday, another analyst lowered the forecast for deliveries by the electric car company. Tesla CEO Elon Musk has become a close confidant of Trump, which drove the share price up enormously immediately after his election victory. These gains have long since been completely lost, against the backdrop of growing protests against Tesla in the USA and a downright boycott in various European countries. While the market for electric cars grew in Germany in February, for example, Tesla's sales plummeted by more than 76 percent.

In view of the crash in Tesla shares, Trump claimed on Monday that “radical left-wing lunatics” were illegally boycotting Tesla to harm Musk. However, this would not be successful, he assured on his short message service Truth Social and claimed to want to buy a brand-new Tesla on Tuesday. As recently as December, Tesla was worth more than 1.5 trillion US dollars, with a share price of around 480 US dollars. Now the stock market value has fallen from just over 222 US dollars to around 715 billion US dollars. That is still significantly more than some of the largest car companies combined.

Among tech stocks, however, the daily losses on Monday were even greater for several than for Tesla. Reddit, for example, fell by almost 20 percent, while the financial services provider Robinhood lost almost as much. The crypto exchange Coinbase recorded a decline of almost 18 percent and the software manufacturer MicroStrategy around 17 percent. Donald Trump's media company Trump Media, which is responsible for the short news service Truth Social, also lost over 11%. Since Trump's election victory, the company has lost half of its stock market value.

(mho)