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Netflix Stock Crashes Amid Shaky Tech Market

This past Thursday shares of Netflix stock plunged 7 percent as the entire tech industry saw a slump stock prices.

Business Insider published a story the day of Netflix’s plummet, linking the streaming entertainment company’s poor performance with other tech-heavy companies who saw their own dropping prices over the past month.

Both Disney and Time Warner saw significant losses in August after analysis firm Sanford C. Bernstein downgraded their rating of the companies from “outperform” to “market perform.”

Disney saw a 6 percent drop the day of the downgrade, while Time Warner saw a 5 percent drop. A trio of cable/network companies saw losses as well: CBS, Comcast and Viacom.

Initially, investors thought Netflix was in a strong position to maintain its growth because the website was leading the anti-cable charge, wooing customers away from pricey cable packages and toward their low monthly premiums.

However, the company couldn’t weather the storm whose dismal waters were drowning out the profits of Netflix’s competitors.

The online giant, it turns out, wasn’t “completely disconnected” from the market.

Now it seems that Netflix is not completely disconnected from the stock market woes of other media companies.

Google, Apple and Facebook also faced losses on Thursday.

Financial website Market Watch noted that the 7 percent fall in shares was the worst one-day performance of Netflix stocks since Sept. 16, 2011, when the company’s shares fell 8.3 percent.

While some experts say that the drop is part of the larger decline of the tech market, The Guardian (U.K.) hinted at other reasons when the publication printed a story detailing the “outcry” that arose when Netflix said it would not include certain employees in its maternity leave and paternity leave packages.

Netflix has caused an outcry for excluding its roughly 450 DVD-by-mail service employees from its unlimited paid maternity and paternity leave.

This past week also included Netflix’s implementation of higher fees for European customers. Despite the dreary week, the company’s shares are up 115 percent year-to-date.

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