Investing.com - Social media and memory chip stocks dragged the technology sector down in midday trading.
Snap (NYSE:SNAP) stock sank about 9% at 11:55 AM ET (15:55 GMT) following an analyst downgrade that predicted the stock would fall by almost half.
BTIG Research’s Rich Greenfield cut the stock to sell from neutral with a $5 price target, Barron’s reported. The stock closed at nearly $10 in the previous session.
“We are tired of Snapchat’s excuses for missing numbers and are no longer willing to give management ‘time’ to figure out monetization,” Greenfield said.
The plunge in Snap hurt other social media stocks. Twitter (NYSE:TWTR) fell about 4.5% and Facebook (NASDAQ:FB) lost about 2%.
Another downgrade hurt memory chip makers, which pulled the S&P Information Technology sector index down about 0.5%.
Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS) downgraded Micron Technology (NASDAQ:MU) to neutral from buy with a $50 price tag, according to several published reports, citing weaker demand for DRAM and NAND memory.
Micron stock lost about 5.5%, while Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) dropped about 2.7% and Texas Instruments (NASDAQ:TXN) fell about 2%.
Tobacco stocks turned positive on a U.S. Food and Drug Administration announcement that it is considering pulling flavored e-cigarettes from the market to curb youth vaping.
Philip Morris International (NYSE:PM) rose about 4.5%, Altria (NYSE:MO) gained about 7.5% and British American Tobacco (NYSE:BTI) gained about 6%.