By Rex Crum, MarketWatch
SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- Just one day after tech stocks
showed signs of rallying, a broad market slump hit the tech sector
Thursday and dragged down the shares of nearly every major tech
bellwether, including Apple Inc.
Apple (AAPL) fell almost 4%, to close at $97.87 as the company
tried to allay concerns about the iPhone 6 Plus being susceptible
to bending easily.
Apple said that it has received just nine complaints about the
iPhone 6 Plus bending in the front pockets of its users. Apple
called the iPhone warping issue "extremely rare".
The bent iPhone issue came on top of Apple saying on Wednesday
that it had pulled an update to its recently released iOS 8
operating system following complaints that the update caused
certain functions of the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus to not work
properly.
In addition to Apple, Pandora Media Inc. (P), SanDisk Corp.
(SNDK), Yelp Inc. (YELP) and EMC Corp. (EMC) each ended the day
down by at least 3%.
Electronics contract manufacturer Jabil Circuit Inc. (JBL) saw
its shares shed more than 2% to close at $20.39. On Wednesday,
Jabil reported better-than-expected quarterly results.
The Nasdaq Composite Index (RIXF) skidded early and never
recovered. By the time the market closed, the tech-heavy market
gauge had fallen 88 points, or almost 2%, to close at 4,466. The
Philadelphia Semiconductor Index (SOX) was also bruised, and also
gave up almost 2% on the day.
The broader market decline came as the monthly durable-goods
report showed orders for U.S. products fell more than 18% in August
after what had been a 22.5% gain during July. Much of the decline
was due to orders for airplanes, which are volatile.
(Read more about the day's market action in Market Snapshot
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/us-stocks-futures-slip-ahead-of-durable-goods-data-2014-09-25.).
Subscribe to WSJ: http://online.wsj.com?mod=djnwires