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Stocks fell in morning trading on Wall Street Thursday as Facebook parent company Meta plunged 24.5%, erasing more than $220 billion in market value, the largest drop in history.
Meta's lofty stock price, as with several other big communications and technology companies, has an outsize influence on markets. That means a big swing in either direction for such a company can do much to sink or lift the broader market.
The S&P 500 index fell 1.4% as of 10:03 a.m. Eastern and the tech-heavy Nasdaq fell 2.3%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 275 points, or 0.8%, to 35,353.