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• US Stocks

• Microsoft, CrowdStrike Outage

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Economy & Finance

US Stocks

US stocks declined on Friday, with the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite both losing around 0.6% and 0.7%, respectively, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropping 387 points, or 1%. This marks another day of declines amid a broader rotation from megacap tech stocks to smaller names, which are seen as likely beneficiaries of potential Federal Reserve interest rate cuts. The S&P 500 is down about 2% for the week, the Nasdaq has slipped 3.7%, while the Dow is up 0.6%, and the Russell 2000 has gained nearly 2%. CrowdStrike shares fell over 10% following a significant global IT outage.

Technology

Microsoft, CrowdStrike Outage

A global technology outage on Friday, triggered by a faulty software update from CrowdStrike, severely disrupted operations across various sectors including travel, finance, public transit, and healthcare. CrowdStrike, which serves over half of Fortune 500 companies, identified the issue as a defect in a recent update affecting Microsoft's Windows OS. Thousands of flights were canceled, with American, Delta, and United Airlines grounding planes shortly after Microsoft addressed a related cloud services outage. Public transit systems in Washington, D.C., and New York City faced impacts, though services continued running. The outage also affected the London Stock Exchange, caused train delays in the U.K., interrupted Sky News broadcasts, and disrupted medical services and airports worldwide. CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz apologized, stating that a fix had been deployed and they were working to restore services.

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