Feb. 4 (UPI) — The S&P 500 climbed for the third consecutive day Wednesday as a drop in Amazon stocks dragged the Nasdaq Composite to slight losses.
At the end of trading, the S&P and Dow Jones Industrial Average turned in meager gains, rising 0.1% and 0.12% respectively, while the Nasdaq Composite dropped 0.16%.
The tech-heavy Nasdaq ended the day with losses after Amazon stock dropped 2% after the company announced Tuesday that founder Jeff Bezos would step down as CEO in the third quarter of 2021 and transition to the role of executive chair while Amazon Web Services CEO Andy Jassy will step up to helm the company.
Amazon also reported earnings of $100 billion in the fourth quarter on Tuesday and AWS reported 28% revenue growth under Jassy.
Google‘s parent company, Alphabet, also reported earnings on Tuesday and stocks rose 7.28% after the company announced 23% revenue growth, exceeding estimates.
Shares of AMC Entertainment and GameStop, which had been boosted by members of the subreddit r/WallStreetBets, rebounded from losses earlier in the week rising 14.41% and 2.68% respectively.
“Despite the relatively strong blowout in these names, on an aggregate level the subset of short squeeze stocks impacted continues to be a negligible fraction of the U.S. equity market,” said Maneesh Deshpande, head of equity derivatives strategy at Barclays.
Trading app Robinhood is facing more than 30 civil lawsuits in federal courts in New Jersey, California, Texas and other states after imposing restrictions on trading in the stocks as retail traders flocked to purchase shares last week.
