Stock market today: Stocks tumble as the S&P 500 caps off its worst week in 3 months

• US stocks closed lower Friday, marking the worst week for the S&P 500 since mid-April.

• A global IT outage caused by a Crowdstrike update exacerbated Friday’s stock market decline.

• Next week, investors will focus on upcoming earnings from Tesla and Alphabet, as well as economic data releases.

US stocks closed lower on Friday, capping off the worst week for the S&P 500 since mid-April.

The decline on Friday extended the trend of smaller-cap stocks outperforming large-cap peers, which was initially sparked by a cooler-than-expected June inflation report last week.

Friday’s decline in stock prices was exacerbated by a global IT outage that plagued computers running Microsoft’s Windows operating system.

The IT outage was caused by a bug contained in a CrowdStrike update, and it ultimately led to canceled and delayed flights, bank outages, and more widespread disruption.

Crowdstrike said it identified the issue and was deploying a fix. Shares of the cyber-security provider plunged about 10%.

Investors got their first glimpse of earnings this week, with major banks like Goldman Sachs reporting solid results on Monday.

Netflix reported better-than-expected revenue, profits, and subscriber growth in its second-quarter earnings report on Thursday, but the stock fell about 2% due to somewhat weak third-quarter guidance.

According to data from Fundstrat, 13% of S&P 500 companies have reported second-quarter earnings results. Of those companies, 81% are beating profit estimates by a median of 4%, while 61% are beating revenue estimates by a median of 3%.

In the week ahead, investors will have a close eye on mega-cap tech earnings results from Tesla and Alphabet, the June Core PCE inflation data, and the second-quarter GDP print.

Here’s where US indexes stood at the 4:00 p.m. closing bell on Friday:

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Here’s what else happened today:

In commodities, bonds, and crypto:

• West Texas Intermediate crude oil was down 3.15% to $78.74 a barrel. Brent crude, the international benchmark, declined 2.75% to $82.77 a barrel.

• Gold fell 2.23% to $2,401.60 per ounce.

• The 10-year Treasury yield rose three basis points to 4.24%.

• Bitcoin increased 5.26% to $67,344.

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