Countless entertainment and media companies, including Disney and Fox, sank lower on Friday, as Wall Street’s weeks-long slump amid the coronavirus outbreak continued on Friday and erased the gains made since President Donald Trump took office.
Disney — which was already weathering the storm after CEO Bob Iger stepped down last month — had another brutal day, with its shares dropping 9.4% on Friday to $85.98 per share. The company’s stock price has plunged 40% since trading near $145 per share in early February, as Disney has had to grapple with closing several theme parks and postponing upcoming movie releases.
The losses continued adding up from there. Shares of Fox on Friday dipped 8% to about $21 per share. AMC and IMAX, a day after enjoying a brief rebound on Thursday, both fell more than 7.5% on Friday, as theater chains continue to dwindle in value. Discovery, ViacomCBS and Apple all dropped between 5% and 11.6% on Friday.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 4.55% to 19,174 points on Friday, pushing the index below the 19,827-point mark where it stood when Trump was inaugurated in January 2017. The Nasdaq and S&P 500 also dropped between 3.8%-4.34% on Friday. About a month ago, the Dow hit its all-time high of 29,551 points and the president was championing the market’s strength on Twitter.
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1230155765349928960?s=20
As for the “winners” on Friday, even those came with modest gains. Roku, after experiencing its own rough month, increased 2.7% today to $76.13 per share. Netflix increased a quarter of a percent to nearly $333 per share, and Lionsgate added about 0.6% and closed at $6.87 per share.
U.S. lawmakers are working to push through a stimulus package that’s worth more than $1 trillion, CNN reported on Friday, in order to help citizens and small businesses deal with the fallout from the pandemic. As of Friday afternoon, there have been more than 15,000 confirmed COVID-19 cases in the U.S., according to the CDC.