DJIA, Nasdaq, S&P Down on Twitter Plunge

The markets were all dragged down on a horrendous day from social media giant Twitter (TWTR) , who saw a massive sell-off after the company’s six month post-IPO share lockup expired, allowing insiders their first chance to get out of the moribund tech play.

The sell-off came as a shock, as yesterday it appeared Twitter would follow in the footsteps of rival Facebook Inc. (FB) and escape “Lockup Day” relatively unscathed. However, while the biggest insiders like founder Biz Stone appeared to hold firm per their promises, the same couldn’t be said for the scores lesser employees and early investors who also held private shares Twitter. The sell-off began immediately and got worse throughout the day, causing the former momentum play to tank more than 17 percent by days’ end, well below its stock price at the conclusion of its first day of trading in Nov. 2103.

The Twitter debacle hit the tech-heavy Nasdaq index the hardest, but was felt throughout the broader markets. A bright earnings call from First Solar (FSLR) and big gains for Office Depot (ODP) and indie oil & gas play Forest Oil (FST) could not overcome that day’s overall downtrend.    

Results for May 6, 2014

• Standard & Poor’s 500: -.90 percent to 1,867 points
• Dow Jones Industrial Average: -.78 percent to 16,401 points
• NASDAQ Exchange:  -.1.39 percent to 4,080 points

Our Top Stories

• Famed short-seller David Einhorn talked to Bloomberg and made some sweeping claims about the formation of a tech bubble while remaining cagey about specifics.
• Andy Waldock says that long-term bonds appear to be rounding the bend with the tapering of quantitative easing.
• IPO expert Francis Gaskins takes a look at the upcoming public market debut of LNG play GasLog Partners ($GLOP).
• George Brooks expects the market to emerge from its relative stability and become quite interesting indeed in the coming months.

Stocks

• Volatile healthcare stock IsoRay (ISR) jumped on the day on “mysterious buying activity” from momentum buyers.
• Office Depot spiked on the announcement of an addition by subtraction model, opting to close 400 underperforming locations to bolster the strongest locations.