By RONNY REYES
Stocks fell on Friday during the final day of the worst year for the market since 2008, with the Dow Jones, S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite all plummeting.
As of closing time on Friday evening, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell by nearly 3,500 points since the start of the year, a 9.4 percent drop.
The S&P 500 was also down by 957 points this year, with the tech-heavy index falling by almost 20 percent, capping off a brutal year for the tech industry.
Meanwhile, the Nasdaq sunk by more than 5,600 points, a nearly 34 percent decline in 2022.
The largest company to see the biggest losses this year was Tesla, which overtook Meta after its stock value plummet by nearly 70 percent as CEO Elon Musk instructed his employees to not be ‘bothered by stock market craziness.’
Along with the tech giants, the entertainment industry saw major blows this year as well, with Disney, Netflix, and Warner Bros. Discovery leading the plummet.
Along with Tesla, the Match Group, the company behind the online dating service Match.com, saw a 69 percent drop in share value this year.
The dating company has only been in the public trading market since the summer of 2020, and struggled to find its footing during the height of the pandemic.
Facebook-parent company Meta Platforms and PayPal have also seen the steepest drops this year, which has been particularly hard on the tech industry fueled by supply chain shortages.
On the last day of trading this year, Meta’s stock was down more than 64 percent compared to January, with prices sinking from over $338-per-share to now $120-per-share.
The company has lost more than $600 billion in valuation as it spend billions to make its controversial leap to virtual reality with its Metaverse, with the efforts continuing to come up short.
Meta has since engaged in a hiring freeze and laid off thousands of employees.
PayPal faired no better as it saw its own shares fall from $187 at the start of the year to now only worth $71 as its stock plummeted by more than 63 percent.
Amazon also suffered heavy loses this year, with its stock down more than 50 percent, and Apple saw the largest market capital loss of any big company
Investors with the iPhone maker lost $851 in their holdings as the stock dropped by nearly 29 percent this year.
Along with the drops in the tech industry, some of the biggest names in entertainment also saw their values sink.