5 things to know before the stock market opens Friday, July 19

Here are five key things investors need to know to start the trading day:

Stocks fell again on Thursday as investors continued to dump megacap tech plays. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 533.06 points, or 1.29%, while the S&P 500 lost 0.78% and the technology-heavy Nasdaq Composite slipped 0.70%. This time, the downslide affected more than just the big tech names as nine out of 10 Dow categories and 10 out of 11 S&P 500 sectors saw losses. Even the small-cap-focused Russell 2000, which has benefited from expectations for forthcoming interest rate cuts, lost about 1.9%. Meanwhile, bucking the trend, Nvidia shares rose nearly 3% Thursday. Follow live market updates.

Businesses worldwide were grappling with an ongoing massive IT outage Friday morning as cybersecurity giant CrowdStrike experienced an issue with its latest tech update. Planes were grounded and banks and financial services were disrupted as a result. Meanwhile, Microsoft users worldwide were experiencing the “blue screen of death” and were stuck in a restarting state after two different and non-related issues: one relating to CrowdStike, and another relating to its Azure cloud computing platform. CrowdStrike is in the process of rolling back the update that caused the issue, the company told NBC. CrowdStrike shares fell as much as 15% in premarket trading. Follow live updates on the outage.

Netflix beat analyst estimates when it released its second-quarter earnings after the bell Thursday. The streaming giant also added more global subscribers and said its ad-supported memberships grew 34% during the quarter compared with the same period last year. It reported that it has more than 277 million global customers, making it the largest subscription streaming service in the world. But that metric won’t last long. The company is phasing out data on membership numbers, or average revenue per user, beginning in 2025 in an effort to focus on revenue and operating margin. It reported that revenue was up 17% compared with the year-earlier period.

Amazon Prime Day drove online shopping to a new record. U.S. consumers spent $14.2 billion in online purchases Tuesday and Wednesday, an 11% increase year over year, according to Adobe Analytics. That topped estimates of $14 billion. Adobe’s numbers track transactions across a wide swath of U.S. retail sites, not just Amazon. Amazon didn’t release total sales from its two-day event beyond saying its revenue was “record-breaking.” Adobe said the top categories were consumer electronics and back-to-school products, which is a shift from last year, when sales were driven by inflation-weary consumers stocking up on household essentials like pantry staples and office supplies.

Democratic megadonors are using their leverage with congressional leaders to pressure President Joe Biden to drop out of the 2024 race. The pressure on Biden stems from concerns that after his disastrous debate performance, he could not only lose the White House, but also cost the Democratic Party its Senate majority and doom any chance it has of regaining a House majority. Meanwhile, former President Donald Trump gave his first public remarks since he was nearly assassinated at a campaign rally last weekend. During his Republican National Convention nomination acceptance speech in Milwaukee, he recounted the events and only mentioned Biden by name a few times, in a break from his recent rallies.

— CNBC’s Alex Harring, Katrina Bishop, Arjun Kharpal, Ryan Browne, Ruxandra Iordache, Lillian Rizzo, Alex Sherman, Annie Palmer, Brian Schwartz and Dan Mangan contributed to this report.

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