Standard & Poor's and Nasdaq are witnessing the largest series of declines since 2022. Dow Jones holds up – Al Borsa

Wall Street's major indexes closed mixed on Friday, with investors focused on the first-quarter earnings season.

The Standard & Poor's 500 index, the region's benchmark, lost 0.88% to 5,967.22 points. The Nasdaq technology index fell by 2.05% to 15,282.01 points. The two indices recorded the sixth day of losses in a row – which has not happened since October 2022 – recording a weekly decline of 3.85% and 6.12%, respectively.

Punishing the global “benchmark” was Netflix, which announced on Thursday that it had recorded the largest quarterly growth since 2020 in terms of paid subscriptions between January and March of this year and revealed that it would stop publishing these numbers from 2025 onwards. Unexpected revenue forecasts for the fiscal first quarter ended up punishing the company's shares, which fell 9.09% to $555.04 — the biggest drop in the past two years.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 0.56% to 37,986.4 points, supported by the results of American Express – which recorded higher-than-expected profits and its value rose by 6.23%.

Nvidia and Super Micro Computer also recorded huge losses, amounting to 10% and 23.14%, indicating that investors were withdrawing capital gains and abandoning sectors that led the “rise” at the beginning of the year on Wall Street.

Technology-related securities – a sector that relies heavily on debt – always end up being more sensitive to any interest rate news.

On the positive side, Paramount Global stock rose more than 13% after Reuters reported that Sony Pictures Entertainment and Apollo Global Management fund are in talks to submit a proposal to buy the company.

Attention remains focused on the drone attack against Iran, which Israel understood as retaliation. But Tehran's reaction, which downplayed the incident and indicated it had no plans to retaliate, calmed the mood of investors who feared escalating regional tensions.

The “rally” in North American stock markets recorded over the past five months has begun to subside, partly due to changing expectations for a Federal Reserve interest rate cut, which was targeted for June.

“We've seen that rate cut estimates are still failing to coalesce into the market, which is a good thing, because there's nothing in the data to suggest they need to be cut,” said Mike Dixon, an analyst at Horizon Investments. He told Reuters.

“Therefore, in an environment where we are approaching historical highs and where interest rates will not fall, the market should be driven by growth in corporate results,” he added.