Why did the NASDAQ and the Dow fall so sharply on Thursday night?

On Thursday, Dow and the NASDAQ reacted negatively to news of 50 bps rate hike by the Fed. By the close of the day, the Dow was down by more than 1,000 points while the NASDAQ fell by 647 points. The fall was much sharper during the day, but the markets managed to gain some sanity in the latter half of the day. The main worry was with respect to the hawkish outlook for rates and the promise to speed up the rate hikes.

The most hard hit stocks were on the NASDAQ and included such marquee names like Google, Apple, Microsoft, Meta, Tesla and Amazon. The sharp spike in the dollar to a 20-year high is an obvious dampener for the tech stocks, which rely heavily on global revenues. On the S&P benchmarks, all the 11 major sectoral indices fell with the consumer discretionary and technology sectors the worst hit. CBOE VIX spiked to above 31 levels.