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Warren Buffett likened the stock markets to a "gambling parlor" at this weekend's annual Berkshire Hathaway shareholders conference. If that's true, this is one lousy casino.
The day before the Oracle of Omaha spoke, April closed with a thud. Friday's selloff, in which the Nasdaq Composite fell 537 points and the Dow Jones Industrial Average took a 939-point haircut, pushed markets into the record books. Even Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway, which had been outperforming most blue chips this year, couldn't escape the carnage. It fell 3.8% last week.
Zooming out, the Nasdaq fell a whopping 13% in April, the tech-heavy exchange's worst monthly performance since the autumn of 2008, at the height of the global financial crisis. It's now down 21% for the year, solidly in bear territory. As for the S&P 500, it's off to its worst start to a year since 1939.
But stocks weren't even the worst-performing risk asset last month. The "worst of" award goes to crypto king Bitcoin, which fell 17.8%.
View this interactive chart on Fortune.com
A bevy of headwinds are dragging down stocks, including inflation, supply-chain woes, growth concerns, and war in Ukraine. Not even earnings season can restore investor fortunes.
Investors continue to give earnings beats a muted cheer. For those companies that deliver a miss, the punishment is severe. On Friday, the markets pounded Amazon for posting a big bottom-line dud.
Apple, too, last week failed to give shareholders the knockout report card they've grown accustomed to. With the company seeing supply-chain challenges ahead, it again declined to furnish investors with future guidance. Apple shares fell 3.7% on Friday, adding to the collective gloom around stocks.
"Disappointing guidance from technology giants Amazon and Apple ha[s] exacerbated concern that a decidedly more hawkish Fed, coupled with still intractable supply chain issues, and rising energy prices, may make the hope of a 'soft landing' from the Fed more elusive," Quincy Krosby, chief equity strategist for LPL Financial, said after the close on Friday.
Roughly 80% of S&P 500 firms have reported results, and those results should give investors some reason to worry. Overall, earnings growth is faltering. According to FactSet, S&P firms are expected to deliver, on aggregate, earnings growth equivalent to a 7.1% gain year-on-year. That comes in below the five- and 10-year average, FactSet calculates.