Media, Tech Stocks Dragged Down Amid Broader Market Sell-Off Over Fears of Slowing U.S. Economy

A broad-based selloff in stock markets Monday pushed stock prices of major media and tech companies lower, as investors worried that a U.S. recession may be looming.

As of 3 p.m. ET Monday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 2.7%, the S&P 500 was off 3.3% and the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite had dropped 4%. The drops came after big declines in Asian and European markets and on the heels of last Friday’s U.S. jobs report that showed “significantly slower hiring, with unemployment rising to its highest level in nearly three years,” per the New York Times.

Media stocks seeing declines included Warner Bros. Discovery (-3.9%), Disney (-1%), Paramount Global (-3.6%), Comcast (-1.6%) and Netflix (-3.2%). Large-cap technology stocks were also hit: Meta was down 3.3%, Apple dropped 6.6%, Alphabet was down 5% and Amazon declined 4.6%.

That said, stocks had recovered somewhat from even steeper losses earlier in the session.

On Disney, Morgan Stanley analysts issued a note Monday lowering earnings estimates for the media conglomerate based on concerns over its theme parks business. “There are enough data points at this point to take a more cautious view of Disney’s parks business in FY25,” analyst Ben Swinburne wrote, adding that “much of this appears priced” into the stock given the drop in Disney’s share price since its last quarterly earnings report in May. Morgan Stanley lowered estimates for Disney’s FY25 adjusted EPS by 4.5% and lowered estimates for FY26 by about 1.5% “as a more bullish film outlook partially offsets Parks.”