Thursday was a bad day on Wall Street, and the Nasdaq Composite (NASDAQINDEX: ^IXIC) and Nasdaq-100 suffered the largest declines among the major benchmarks. With drops of roughly 2.5%, the Nasdaq indexes saw much steeper losses than the Dow Jones Industrials and the broader S&P 500 -- let alone the flat performance of the small-cap Russell 2000.
Investors had anticipated earnings results from Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) for months, and in classic sell-the-news mode, the electric vehicle maker's stock dropped even after shareholders got the profit they had hoped to see. Meanwhile, Citrix Systems (NASDAQ: CTXS) also released earnings, and although its numbers were solid, they couldn't live up to the high expectations investors had in the tech company.
Shares of Tesla were down 5%, helping to lead the Nasdaq indexes lower. Interestingly, the stock had traded higher in the after-hours session Wednesday night immediately following its earnings report, but investors apparently had second thoughts by the end of regular trading Thursday.