Entrepreneurial Stocks Continue to Tumble, but Market Bullish on …

October
11, 2018

3 min read

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

Stocks were down again today. So was the price of oil. But, the market is bullish on women’s lingerie.

L Brands, maker of Victoria’s Secret lingerie, was up 5.93 percent on the strength of a better than expected 8 percent surge in September sales that the company reported this morning. The results exceeded market expectations as the Columbus, Ohio based company had been guiding sales and profit estimates down for much of the year. L Brands was the biggest gainer in the Entrepreneur index today, though its shares are still down 48 percent for the year.

The Entrepreneur Index seesawed for much of the day as the stock market continued to be volatile — largely in a downward direction. After falling 4.41 percent yesterday, the index of 60 leading companies run by their founders or founding family members was off another 1.57 percent today.

Technology stocks continued to slide. The tech heavy Nasdaq Composite index was down 1.25 percent today. It is now technically in correction territory, as it has fallen more than 10 percent from its peak in late August.

Tech stocks in the Entrepreneur Index that were hammered yesterday fared only slightly better today. Netflix, down a whopping 8.4 percent yesterday was off another 1.47 percent today. Amazon, the most valuable company in the index, was down 2.04 percent after falling more than 5 percent yesterday. NVIDIA, the chip manufacturer for the gaming industry was down 4.3 percent, the third biggest decline on the index for the day.

Related: The Hottest Stocks Posted the Day’s Biggest Declines

Several tech companies, however, bucked the trend. Facebook was up 1.3 percent and salesforce.com, one of the biggest decliners yesterday, was up 1.04 percent. Twitter, which had the biggest drop on the index yesterday at 8.5 percent, was up 0.75 percent today.

The price of oil also continued to slide today, down another 3 percent after falling 3.15 percent yesterday. Crude inventories in the U.S. came in higher than expected and both the International Monetary Fund and OPEC have recently lowered their forecasts of global economic growth and global oil demand. Energy companies have suffered. Oil and gas producer Hess Corp. was down another 3.22 percent today and Kinder Morgan, which manages oil and gas pipelines, was off 2.52 percent.

Discount retailer Dollar Tree seems to have been punished for being one of only three stocks on the index with a positive gain yesterday. The shares were down 5.6 percent today after the company announced it planned to hire 25,000 people at a national hiring event next week.

The biggest decline on the day, however, belongs to Jefferies Group. The financial services sector has been taking it on the chin as volatility has picked up in the markets. The investment banking and advisory firm was down 6.57 percent on the day.