Telecom Stocks Get Smacked
Telecom-related stocks plummeted Monday as the major averages reached multi-year lows following more fears of the spreading credit crisis.
Fears of a
heated up over the weekend as leaders from France, Germany, Italy and the U.K. met Saturday and agreed to coordinate efforts to prevent failures in Europe's financial system.
Despite having a
in place, fear swept over Wall Street that financial markets would seize, affecting any company that depends on banks to keep floating money.
Investors quickly fled from equities to the so-called safe haven of credit markets, sending shares lower. The
Dow Jones Industrial Average
fell below the 10,000 threshold for the first time in nearly four years and both the
Nasdaq
and
S&P 500
were down more than 4% each.
Handset makers were hit especially hard, as
Nokia
(NOK) - Get Report
slipped 8.5%,
Motorola
(MOT)
was falling 8% and
Ericsson
(ERIC) - Get Report
lost 7.4%.
Among high-end device makers,
Research in Motion
(RIMM)
gave back nearly 10%,
Palm
(PALM)
was losing 9% and
Apple
(AAPL) - Get Report
was down 6%.
Network equipment makers also saw shares slide dramatically.
Nortel Networks
(NT)
lost 13%,
Alcatel-Lucent
(ALU)
slid 11.6%,
Cisco Systems
(CSCO) - Get Report
tumbled 5% and
Juniper Networks
(JNPR) - Get Report
was off 3%.
U.S. wireless carriers were also losing ground.
AT&T
(T) - Get Report
gave back 4.2%,
Verizon
(VZ) - Get Report
fell 4.1% and
Sprint Nextel
(S) - Get Report
dipped 0.5%.
Deutsche Telekom
(DT) - Get Report
, meanwhile, fell 1.7%.
Cable and satellite operators were also hit hard.
Sirius XM
(SIRI) - Get Report
dropped nearly 14%,
Cablevision
(CVC)
dropped 8.7%,
Dish Network
(DISH) - Get Report
was down 5.9% and
Comcast
(CMCSA) - Get Report
slid 2.2%.