Alphabet Drops As Stock Market Ticks Upward

Alphabet (GOOG) might be in trouble right now as one of the biggest stocks takes a tumble at a time when the major stock indices are climbing.

We predicted on Thursday that the stock market would start to recover from its recent bull run, and we are seeing the beginnings of that now. By Thursday morning, the stock market’s decline had slowed, and by the time trading finished that same day, the market had made upward progress.

As the market prepares to open for Friday morning, the Dow Jones is up by 1.06%, or 461 points. The S&P 500 has gained 0.53%, and the Nasdaq Composite is up by 0.03%. To see the entire market up by any measure is promising for investors who were worried that the bullish market would continue for longer and wipe out many of their gains.

This week has been mostly focused on retailers, like Wal-Mart, Target, Dollar Tree, and Lowe’s, which all had their quarterly earnings reports released over the last few days. It is looking like a tight Christmas for retailers, at least on Target’s (TGT) end, as the company adjusted their guidance moving forward and said they expected to stay flat through the holiday season.

Alphabet’s Stock Troubles

Google’s parent company, Alphabet, is experiencing a stock decrease of 4.57% today. That could become even worse today as its troubles continue, and the company is not expected to recover anytime soon from a forced selloff of the Chrome browser.

In a decisive move, the US government has ordered Alphabet to divest itself of the Chrome browser, and this is designed to keep the company from having a monopoly over online search engines. This is something that investors were worried about for a while, and now that the government has forced Alphabet’s hand, the company will have to scramble to get their stock price back up.

Chrome is the most popular internet browser right now and has been for a few years. For Alphabet to lose this key resource means that they are being forced to shoot themselves in the foot. We have not seen GOOG stock drop this far and this fast since January of this year, when it fell 7% after a poor quarterly earnings statement.

This antitrust case was put forward by lawyers from 11 different US states and argued that Alphabet has become monopolistic. Part of the lawsuit called for Google to stay out of the browser market for five years. There was a further step that did not get approved that would have required a separation between Android and Google. As it stands, Alphabet will have a hard time meeting the next quarterly earnings expectations.