Tech stocks hammered on Iran war worries, Meta legal woes
Meta Platforms Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg (C) arrives for a meeting with U.S. Senator Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) on Capitol Hill on March 26, 2026 in Washington DC.
Andrew Harnik | Getty Images
It’s been a bad week for stocks, especially for tech investors, as the Nasdaq suffered its worst weekly decline since April 2025. Meta And Micron double-digit declines were seen, but the pain was felt across the board as concerns about the US-Iran war pushed up energy prices.
Nasdaq fell 3.23% for the week. The tech-heavy index last saw such a selloff in April, after President Donald Trump’s threat of sweeping tariffs nearly caused panic in the market.
google parent Alphabet fell almost 9% and Microsoft While it lost almost 7% of its value this week, Nvidia And Amazon each shifted by about 3%. Tesla’s fell by almost 2%. Among technology megacap companies, Apple maintained its best and recorded a slight increase throughout the week.
Meta had its worst week of the bunch, falling more than 11% after two bitter court defeats added to the social media company’s difficulties. Both trials, one in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and the other in Los Angeles, highlighted the challenges Meta faces in adequately policing Facebook and Instagram, which remain the company’s primary monetization tools as it trails Google, OpenAI, and Anthropic in artificial intelligence.
Meanwhile, investors have abandoned memory maker Micron, one of the market’s leading performers last year, due to shortages caused by rising demand for AI processors.
Micron shares are down more than 15% for the week, but are still up nearly 300% over the past 12 months. The sell-off began last week following Micron’s big second-quarter earnings report. Revenue nearly tripled to $23.86 billion in the latest quarter, and the company issued a strong forecast calling for a gross margin of nearly 80% for the next quarter.
Micron CEO Sanjay Mehrotra said in a statement to CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street” program after the report, “Supply today is very tight and supply cannot be brought up that easily, and you see that in our results.” he said.
But as global markets feel the pain of rising fuel costs and uncertainty remains about when the conflict in the Middle East will be resolved, Micron’s results did nothing to calm Wall Street’s nerves.
Oil prices closed at their highest level in more than three years on Friday after events in the Strait of Hormuz raised investors’ energy supply concerns. In a post on Truth Social, President Trump suggested he wants to end the war in Iran as rising costs weigh on sentiment and create a growing problem for Republicans in Congress heading into midterm elections.
As investors pour money into technology this week, attention turns to the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, and what his trillion-dollar companies will do next. SpaceX, valued at $1.25 trillion after merging with Musk’s xAI last month, is expected to soon file for an initial public offering, which could be the largest offering in history. And Musk’s electric vehicle company, Tesla, is scheduled to report quarterly deliveries next week.
WRISTWATCH: Legal Analyst: Regulatory pressure to follow after landmark social media decision
