the first trading day in May, Dow falls 622 points

U.S. stocks started the first trading day in May on a downbeat note after notching the best April for the benchmarks in years. The day’s losses wiped out weekly gains and were mostly reflective of the magnitude of the surge in the prior month and concerns about the earnings prospects for the likes of Amazon.com Inc. AMZN, +0.95% and Apple Inc. AAPL, -0.57%, dominant technology-related firms that have been at the vanguard of a recovery for the market from a coronavirus-induced selloff that hit a low in late March.

On Friday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, -1.58% closed down more than 622 points, or 2.6%, at 23,724, marking its worst day since April 21, while the S&P 500 index SPX, -1.04% ended down 2.8% at around 2,831 and the Nasdaq Composite Index COMP, -0.53% closed down 3.2% at about 8,604. For the week, the Dow ended off 0.2%, the S&P 500 booked a 0.2% weekly decline and the Nasdaq looked a 5-session loss of 0.3%.

Worries about China, Amazon and Apple

Shares of Amazon ended the session down by more than 7% after the company said that it would use its profits to spend on protecting its workers during the COVID-19 pandemic, raising the question about costs for companies during the public health crisis.

Separately, shares of electric-vehicle maker Tesla Inc. TSLA, -0.69% finished the session off by more than 10% after its CEO Elon Musk tweeted that the share price of the company had gotten too high.

Shares of Apple finished down 1.6% after the company declined to provide guidance for its coming quarter.

Investors also were watching developments between the U.S. and China amid threats of tariff retaliation against the world’s second-largest economy for its handling of the novel strain of coronavirus, which was first identified in Wuhan in December