Stocks Drop as Businesses Are Affected by Tech Outages – Europe Market Wrap

Global markets faltered on Friday as worldwide computer system disruptions disrupted travel, trading, and banking activities, threatening to worsen a drop in technology stocks.

Crowdstrike, a cybersecurity business, plummeted up to 21% in US premarket trade after warning that their software was causing computer systems to fail. Its CEO later stated that the problem had been detected and “a fix was being deployed.” Microsoft shares fell 2% despite the company’s announcement that it had rectified an earlier cloud-services failure.

However, contracts for the Nasdaq 100 and S&P 500 indices recovered early losses to trade only 0.1% lower. In Europe, the Stoxx 600 index fell 0.5% for the fifth consecutive day.

The disruptions came at the end of a week in which the tech-heavy Nasdaq fell more than 3% as investors backed out of high-flying megacap firms and shifted to smaller companies.