Wall St. Suffers Worst Week Since March

• Stocks fell on Friday, dropping for the fourth time in the past five days in a retreat that has added up to Wall Street’s worst week since March, as rising pandemic cases, new shutdowns and a sell-off in large technology stocks all dragged the major benchmarks lower.

• The S&P 500 fell 1.2 percent, bringing its loss for the week to 5.6 percent. That’s its biggest weekly drop since the week through March 20, when stocks plunged 15 percent before they began to rebound after the Federal Reserve and lawmakers in Washington stepped in to bolster the economy. The Dow Jones industrial average fell 6.5 percent this week.

• The latest sell-off has come as a second wave of cases forced more lockdowns in Europe, threatening the economic recovery and spooking investors around the world. In the United States, a record number of cases is prompting city and county governments to start imposing some curfews and limits on gatherings.

• And trading has been volatile for much of October, with investors whipsawed by expectations about whether Congress and the White House would agree on a new economic relief plan, anticipation of a contested election next week and concern about the sharp rise in virus cases.

• The decline on Friday leaves the S&P 500 with a gain of 1.2 percent for the year. As recently as Oct. 12, the index was up more than 9 percent for the year.

• “The Covid infections are moving in the wrong direction at a pretty quick pace, not just here in the U.S., but globally as well, so there’s a lot of concern about that among investors,” said Chris Larkin, managing director of trading and investment products at E-Trade Financial.

• Concern about the economic impact of any pandemic-related shutdown has been particularly evident in energy markets. West Texas Intermediate crude, the American benchmark, fell 1 percent on Friday, bringing its losses to 10 percent for the week, its biggest five-day decline since April.

• In the stock market on Friday, big technology stocks led the retreat even after many of them reported a jump in profit. Twitter was the worst-performing stock in the S&P 500, dropping 21 percent, after its user growth fell short of expectations. Apple fell more than 5 percent, after it said a delay in the release of the iPhone 12 led to a drop in iPhone sales.

• Facebook and Amazon were also sharply lower. Alphabet was the only one of the four tech giants that reported results on Thursday to gain, climbing more than 3 percent after reporting a rise in advertising on Google and YouTube. The Nasdaq composite fell 2.5 percent.

• Shares in Europe were mixed on Friday, with the Dax in Germany and the FTSE 100 in Britain lower, while the CAC 40 index in France rose slightly.

• Data published Friday showed Europe’s economy recorded its strongest rebound on record in the third quarter, jumping 12.7 percent from the previous quarter in countries that share the euro. But the latest lockdowns mean economists are now worried about a double-dip recession, if economic growth is wiped out by weeks of orders to stay at home and the closure of bars, restaurants and nonessential shops.

Four tech companies with a combined market value of $5 trillion — Alphabet, Amazon, Apple and Facebook — reported their latest earnings after the market closed on Thursday. The DealBook newsletter compiled some of the big numbers in the filings:

$64.7 billion: Apple’s revenue rose just 1 percent, but that beat expectations as analysts were expecting a decline because of the delayed release of the new iPhone. Sales of services helped cover the shortfall.

197 percent: Amazon’s quarterly profit nearly tripled, to $6.3 billion. Bonus stat: The company also added almost 250,000 employees in the period, surpassing more than a million workers for the first time.

2.54 billion: The number of people using one or more apps in Facebook’s family — Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger and its core app — rose 15 percent.

$5 billion: Advertising revenue at Google’s YouTube unit set a record, rising 30 percent, bolstered by stay-at-home viewing.

As concerns about another wave of coronavirus inflections swept the globe in recent months, shoppers again hit grocery stores and loaded up on pantry items, sending sales of Kraft Heinz’s food products soaring in the third quarter.

The maker of Heinz ketchup, Kraft macaroni & cheese and Oscar Mayer cold cuts said on Thursday that organic sales, which strip out currency movements, acquisitions and divestitures, rose 6.3 percent to $6.4 billion in the third quarter…