Nasdaq tumbles 1.7% Thursday, descending further into correction territory: Live updates

Stocks closed lower on Thursday, with another decline in the Nasdaq Composite pushing the index further into correction territory.

The tech-heavy Nasdaq pulled back 1.76% to close at 12,595.61, while the S&P 500 slipped 1.18% to 4,137.23. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 251.63 points, or 0.76%, to finish the session at 32,784.30.

— Brian Evans

The S&P 500, Dow Jones Industrial Average and Nasdaq Composite fell sharply Thursday, but a look under the surface points to a more resilient market.

The number of advancing stocks at the New York Stock Exchange was about even to that of those names that advanced. Overall, about 1,300 NYSE-listed stocks were higher, while around 1,400 declined.

— Fred Imbert

Information technology and communication services led the S&P 500 lower on Thursday.

Both sectors of the broad index slid more than 2%, making them the worst performers of the 11 sectors. The index as a whole, meanwhile, dropped 1.2%.

Comcast and Meta contributed to communication services' slide with drops of more than 6% and 4%, respectively. Facebook parent Meta reported earnings on Wednesday, while Comcast posted its quarterly report Thursday morning. The sector is on track to end the week more than 6% lower.

Meanwhile, Western Digital was the worst performer among information technology names, shedding 11% after Nikkei reported that its merger talks with Kioxia were ending. Arista Networks followed with an 8% loss.

Despite the leg down, three of the 11 sectors were on pace for gains on Thursday. Real estate led the way with an advance of 1.8%. Utilities and materials followed, with both trading 0.8% higher.

— Alex Harring

Disclosure: Comcast owns NBCUniversal, the parent company of CNBC.

Check out some of the companies making headlines in midday trading.

Bunge — Shares of the global crop trader and processor popped 5.2% after the company lifted its 2023 outlook and reported better-than-expected profit for the third quarter. Bunge's earnings were lower year-on-year, however.

Comcast — Comcast shares fell 6.3% after the telecom giant reported a loss in high-speed broadband subscribers. Advertising revenue from NBCUniversal was also weak.

UPS — The shipping company saw shares decline 5.3% after releasing its third-quarter earnings report, which showed disappointing revenue. Full-year revenue guidance was also slightly below expectations.

Disclosure: Comcast owns NBCUniversal, the parent company of CNBC.

Read the full list here.

— Brian Evans

The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite and concentrated Nasdaq-100 dropped nearly 2% on Thursday as megacap technology and communication services stocks sold off.

Align Technology was the biggest laggard on the index, cratering 25% on the back of disappointing earnings. Meta Platforms sank 4% as investors weighed cautious advertising commentary.

The Trade Desk and Comcast dropped 8.7% and 6.6%, respectively, while Lucid Group, Microsoft and AI chipmaker Nvidia each lost about 4% each.

— Samantha Subin

Disclosure: Comcast owns NBCUniversal, the parent company of CNBC.

The S&P 500 is hitting its lows of the session and is now in a correction on an intraday basis. The benchmark's decline from its 52-week intraday high in July is now 10.1%.

The S&P 500 is off by 9.7% from its 2023 high closing price on July 31, so not quite an official correction just yet.

The Nasdaq Composite is already in correction territory, entering on Wednesday.

—John Melloy

Tech behemoth Apple fell below its 200-day moving average on Thursday, as the broader tech sector continued to decline.

Apple stock ticked down nearly 2% to $167.78, slipping beneath its 200-day moving average of $171.62. The pullback could suggest investors are questioning the long-term trend for Apple stock. '

Shares falling below a given 200-day moving average can signal investor losses could push them to sell more stock if the decline continues.

— Brian Evans

Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway bought more shares of Occidental Petroleum this week after a four-month buying hiatus.

The conglomerate purchased 1.3 million shares over the first three days of this week, paying a total of more than $264 million, according to a regulatory filing released Wednesday evening.

Berkshire paid an average price of $62.83, higher than most of its previous purchases, which were in the high $50s. As of Wednesday, Berkshire owns 228 million common shares, a stake of 25.8%, with a market value of $14.4 billion based on Wednesday's close of $63.27 per share.

In the filing, Berkshire also said Occidental redeemed 7,067 shares of preferred stock by paying Berkshire $110,000 per share, which works out to more than $777 million.

— Yun Li, Alex Crippen

Retail traders stepped up selling of single stocks across the broader market but remained partial toward lowering positions in utilities, real estate and financials, according to JPMorgan. The firm noted retail traders net sold roughly $365 million worth of equities over the past week.

However, analyst Peng Cheng wrote on Wednesday that retail traders showed particular interest in chip stocks AMD and Nvidia, which saw $369 million and $252 million worth of stock purchases over the past week, respectively.

— Brian Evans

Stocks opened lower on Thursday with the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite falling deeper into correction territory.

The Nasdaq slipped 0.4% while the S&P 500 lost 0.3%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average hovered near the flatline.

— Brian Evans

The U.S. dollar index hit a high not seen in more than two weeks on Thursday morning.

The index, which weighs the greenback against a basket of major currencies, traded as expensive as 106.883. That's the most since Oct. 6, when the index was as high as 106.974.

— Alex Harring, Gina Francolla

U.S. GDP expanded by 4.9% annualized in the third quarter, beating a Dow Jones forecast for 4.7% growth. That expansion rate is also up from the 2.1% seen in the second quarter. This is the latest sign of economic resiliency despite the Federal Reserve's moves to tighten monetary policy to tame inflation.

— Fred Imbert, Jeff Cox

These are some of the stocks moving before the bell:

• Hasbro — The toymaker dropped 9.2% after delivering a weaker-than-expected earnings report for the third quarter. 
• Southwest — The airline slipped 3.3% after third-quarter revenue underwhelmed Wall Street and the company said it planned to slow capacity growth as demand moderated. 
• Bristol-Myers Squibb – Shares of the drug maker slid 4% premarket after the company reported a decline in sales of its popular blood cancer drug Revlimid, citing generic competition. 
• Hershey — The candy-and-snack maker added 2.7% on the back of a strong earnings report.

See the full list here.

— Alex Harring

Airline stock Southwest fell 4.1% before the opening bell on Thursday after the company said in its third-quarter earnings report that it planned to increase flying at a trimmed pace.

Southwest now expects capacity growth of 10% to 12% in the first-quarter of 2024 compared to a previous forecast of as much as 16%. The company matched Wall Street estimates for adjusted earnings per share but missed revenue forecasts. The company's net income also plummeted 30% compared to a year ago.

— Brian Evans

Shares of pharmaceutical firm Bristol-Myers Squibb slipped nearly 5% in premarket trading following third-quarter results. The company reported an earnings beat and revenue that matched Wall Street's forecast, but lowered its full-year adjusted earnings forecast.

Revenue was 2% lower in the quarter compared to the same period a year ago due to lower sales of Revlimid, the company said, as well as increased competition generic alternatives.

— Brian Evans

The Nasdaq Composite fell into official correction territory on Wednesday, off 10.7% from its high close for the year on July 19.

The tech-heavy barometer is down 3% in October amid disappointing earnings results from Tesla and Alphabet. Surging bond yields are largely responsible for the correction from the summer highs with investors fretting that tech shares have the most to lose from higher rates eating away at future earnings growth and exposing high valuations.

Despite the correction, the Nasdaq is still up 22% for the year.

—John Melloy

Merck reported third-quarter earnings and revenue that exceeded expectations, boosted by sales of two key drugs and a vaccine.

The company earned an adjusted $2.13 per share on revenue of $15.96 billion. Analysts polled by LSEG expected a profit of $1.95 per share on revenue of $15.32 billion.

Sales from cancer treatment Keytruda grew by 17% year over year to $6.34 billion. Revenue from Lagevrio, a Covid-19 antiviral treatment, shot up 47% to $640 million. Gardasil, a vaccine used to prevent cancer from HPV, hauled in $2.59 billion in sales, up 13% from the year-earlier period.

— Fred Imbert

Shares of Endeavor rallied 22% after private equity firm Silver Lake proposed taking private the entertainment company.

"Silver Lake is committed to strategies that deliver value for all shareholders of Endeavor. To that end, Silver Lake is currently working toward making a proposal to take Endeavor private," the company said in a statement.

Silver Lake owns about 71% of voting shares of Endeavor. For its part, Endeavor said it's exploring strategic alternatives.

— Fred Imbert

The third-quarter earnings season is becoming a problem for the stock market, according to Adam Crisafulli of Vital Knowledge.

"While there are plenty of macro headwinds, the real problem is earnings," he wrote. "The Q3 season isn't a debacle, but there have been an unusually large number of red flags over the last few weeks, making this one of the worst reporting periods in a while."

Specifically, he pointed to reports from Align Technology, transportation company Landstar and Canadian Pacific Kansas City and Meta as sources of concern.

"The upshot of the earnings weakness is that it means Treasury yields should be a lot lower than they are," he added.

— Fred Imbert, Michael Bloom

Australia's S&P/ASX 200 breached its one-year low on Thursday, falling 0.88% in the morning session to hit a low of 6,777.5 points, lower than the 6,785.7 seen on Oct. 28, 2022.

This comes a day after the country's third-quarter inflation rate came in higher than expected.

Separately, the Australian dollar also weakened 0.55% against the U.S. dollar to reach its lowest level in over a year at 0.6275. The next lowest level was recorded at 0.6196 on Oct. 14, 2022.

— Lim Hui Jie

Stock indexes in Japan and South Korea plunged over 2% on Thursday as investors took cues from Wall Street overnight.

Japan's Nikkei 225 fell 2.13%. South Korea's Kospi index slipped 2.20% to its lowest level since early January.

South Korea's Kosdaq index tumbled over 3%. Shares of South Korean tech stocks were also pressured by a 3.63% fall in chipmaker SK Hynix after its announced quarterly results.

Investors also assessed data from South Korea that showed the economy grew at a slightly higher-than-expected pace in the third quarter.

— Shreyashi Sanyal

Shares of South Korean chip supplier SK Hynix fell 3.92% after the firm announced a 2.18 trillion won ($1.61 billion) net loss for its third quarter, in contrast to a 1.11 trillion won net profit in the same period a year ago.

Revenue fell 17% year on year to come in at 9.07 trillion won. The company also recorded an operating loss of 1.79 trillion won compared to an operating profit of 1.66 trillion won in the third quarter of 2022.

However, SK Hynix highlighted that on a quarter on quarter basis, its losses narrowed as its net loss and operating loss shrank 27% and 38% respectively compared to the second quarter.

"With the effect of the production reduction by global memory providers starting to be seen and customers, following efforts to reduce inventories, placing new orders now, semiconductor prices are starting to stabilize," the company said.

— Lim Hui Jie

The United Auto Workers and Ford Motor agreed in principle to the terms of a tentative deal that could conclude a labor strike at the automaker, sources confirmed to CNBC.

A tentative agreement could be announced as early as Wednesday evening, pending approval of union leaders, two sources told CNBC. UAW members had been on strike since mid-September.

Shares of Ford ticked up by 2.5% in after-hours trading. The automaker is slated to issue its third-quarter results on Thursday after the close.

Read more about the ongoing labor negotiations here.

-Darla Mercado, Mike Wayland

It's been a rough 2023 for utilities, but the troubled sector is the only one in the S&P 500 that's positive for the month.

Utilities are off nearly 16% this year, but they've managed to eke out a gain of 0.66% in October. The sector is also on pace for weekly gains, joined by consumer discretionary. The other nine sectors are heading for losses on the week.

Big winners in the utilities space this week include NextEra Energy, up about 8.7% in the period, and AES Corp, up 6.2%.

Utilities are beloved by income-focused investors for their dividend payments, but they have fallen on hard times as interest rates rise. This subjects companies to higher financing costs and stresses the balance sheets of companies that are already leveraged.

-Darla Mercado, Nick Wells

Shares of Meta dropped 3.1% in post-market trading after the Facebook parent's CFO Susan Li said the company is seeing softer ad spending coming into the fourth quarter.

The stock had initially jumped more than 2% on Meta's earnings report Wednesday, which gave better-than-expected results for the third quarter as revenue increased 23%, the fastest rate of growth since 2021. The company also lowered its fourth-quarter guidance, however, expecting revenue to come out between $36.5 to $40 billion, while analysts surveyed by FactSet expected $38.84 billion.

Li said Meta has observed the softer ad spending correlating with the start of the Middle East conflict, as the Israel-Hamas war enters its third week.

"We've been seeing continued strong advertiser demand in key segments including online commerce and gaming but having said that, we are also seeing more volatility at the start of the quarter," Li said. "That's in part why we widened our guidance range to capture that uncertainty."

The executive noted that although the company cannot attribute demand softness to any geopolitical event with certainty, Meta has historically seen broader demand softness follow other regional conflicts, such as the Russia-Ukraine war.

— Pia Singh, Stephen Desaulniers

U.S. stock futures opened lower on Wednesday night.

Futures tied to the Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 9 points, or 0.05%. Meanwhile, S&P 500 futures and Nasdaq 100 futures ticked down 0.3% and 0.7%, respectively.

— Pia Singh