Microsoft weighs on Wall Street as gold’s price suddenly snaps back

New York – The worst day for Microsoft in years is pulling the U.S. stock market away from its record heights on Thursday. The fever in the gold market may be breaking, meanwhile, as its price pulls back after hitting its latest all-time high.

The S&P 500 sank 1.3% after flirting with its all-time high earlier in the morning. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 307 points, or 0.6%, as of 10:45 a.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 2.3% lower.

Microsoft was the heaviest weight on the market by far, and it sank 12% even though the tech giant reported stronger profit and revenue for the latest quarter than analysts expected. Investors honed in instead on how much Microsoft is spending on investments, whether growth in its Azure cloud business will slow and how long its push into artificial-intelligence will take to turn into big profits.