European markets hit by Wall Street's tech sell-off

European markets are taking a hit today after US tech stocks had their worst day since February 2016 yesterday.

Wall Street's Faangs (Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix and Alphabet’s Google) were battered yesterday over fears of a regulatory crackdown following Facebook's data scandal.

"As one of the main sectors that has driven the bulk of stock market gains over the past two years it remains much more susceptible to a major pullback, which if we see further losses, could act as a bit of a ball and chain for the rest of the equity space," said Michael Hewson, chief market analyst at CMC Markets UK.

"With the S&P 500 back at its long term 200-day moving average, and a lot of attention around this key technical level, investors are likely to become ever more nervous of a much sharper sell-off if we drop below 2,580," he said.

Naeem Aslam, chief market analyst at ThinkMarkets, said: "We think the US equity markets are in for some rough time and we could see the markets falling another five per cent from here."

European tech firms – which mainly consist of chipmakers – followed US stocks lower. Tech stocks led sectoral fallers on the pan-regional Stoxx 600 index this morning.

The UK's blue-chip index was down 0.89 per cent at 6,937.49 at the time of writing.

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