Why Twitter, AstraZeneca, and Spirit Airlines Slumped Today

Technology stocks led the stock market lower on Thursday, taking several market benchmarks down along with them. The Nasdaq took the biggest hit, but losses in other indexes were more measured, and the Dow Jones Industrials managed to buck the trend with a modest gain on the day. Sluggish summer levels of trading activity often lead to more dramatic amounts of volatility, especially when investors are concerned about the length of time that has passed since a major market correction. Earnings season created its share of losers today, and Twitter (NYSE: TWTR), AstraZeneca (NYSE: AZN), and Spirit Airlines (NASDAQ: SAVE) were among the worst performers on the day. Below, we'll look more closely at these stocks to tell you why they did so poorly.

Shares of Twitter plunged 14% after the company announced its second-quarter financial results. The microblogging website said that revenue fell 5% from the year-ago quarter, pushing adjusted earnings per share down by a fifth. More worrisome was a further slowdown in the increase in the number of monthly active users for the service, which decelerated to just 5% year over year and was flat overall since the first quarter. With U.S. monthly active users actually dropping sequentially, investors remain nervous about Twitter's ability to keep up with its social media competitors. Twitter has said that it will need to accept potential sacrifices in financial results in order to attract users, but so far, the company has failed to find the right balance to achieve either goal.

Twitter couldn't earn an up-arrow today. Image source: Twitter.

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Source: Fool.com