Frustrated by what they believed to be indifferent policies being formulated by wealthy, unaccountable elites in Brussels who are far removed from ground realities of regular citizens, a majority of British voters on Thursday decided to go with the ‘Leave’ campaign and opt out of European Union membership through the referendum introduced by the David Cameron-led UK government. Popularly referred to as Brexit, the move has hit global financial markets hard, with stocks plummeting worldwide on fears about the global economic impact of Britain leaving the European Union. While stocks of European telecom companies like Vodafone and Deutsche Telekom took a beating on European stock exchanges earlier in the day, it is now the turn of American tech stocks to be at the receiving end of a broader sell-off across the spectrum as analysts and investors try to assess the long-term impact of Brexit.
While many economists, market watchers and fund managers are of the opinion that the impact of Brexit on the American economy would be minimal, investors do not seem convinced. While tech stocks in the U.S. have been battered following the dramatic developments of Thursday and early Friday, they are not the only ones to be suffering, as Wall Street joined global markets in moving away from risk assets such as equity, commodities and European currencies like the Euro and the British Pound. Alongside tech stocks, financial services stocks have also been badly affected, while the British Pound hit a 7-year low against the U.S. Dollar.
One of the stocks that’s bearing the brunt of today’s dramatic developments happens to be the parent company of Google, Alphabet Inc. The stock was down 4.15% on the NASDAQ at press time, while Apple was trading 2.81% lower than yesterday’s closing price. Some of the other companies whose stock prices are also facing steep declines on the day, include Amazon, Cisco, eBay, Facebook, Intel, Microsoft, Netflix, Oracle, Qualcomm, Twitter and Yahoo, among others in a fairly long list. Even Twilio, who only released its IPO yesterday, has seen its stock plummet 8.61% already, in under a session of trading. That isn’t exactly a surprise, as reports in the American financial media seem to be suggesting that NASDAQ on Friday experienced its biggest single-day decline since 2011.