Facebook, on track for its worst day in more than five years, is dragging down the market.
The Dow fell as much as 472 points on Monday. Facebook tumbled 7%, pulling the S&P 500 down 2% and the Nasdaq 2.7%.
Big tech companies, including Facebook, Amazon, Netflix and Google, have helped contribute to the market’s climb, but all four dropped Monday. The S&P’s tech sector fell 2.9%. It was the worst performing sector on the index.
Facebook is under pressure from lawmakers in both the United States and the UK after more than 50 million users’ data ended up in the wrong hands.
“When you have real damage to a large enough company, that translates into the indexes as a whole,” Brad McMillan, chief investment officer at Commonwealth Financial Network, said.
Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar has called on Zuckerberg to appear before Congress to testify about “what Facebook knew about misusing data from 50 million Americans in order to target political advertising and manipulate voters.”
Investors worry that new regulations on Facebook or an exodus of users from the platform could slow down one of the world’s most valuable companies and chill the tech sector’s rise.