Wall Street finished lower on Friday, weighed down by Big Tech as investors worried about the Omicron coronavirus variant and digested the Federal Reserve’s decision to end its pandemic-era stimulus faster.
Stock moves were magnified by intense activity in the options market, potentially making Friday one of the busiest trading days of the year due to the S&P Dow Jones Indices quarterly re-balance, which comes into effect after markets close on Friday. It is also “quadruple witching” day in U.S. markets, when options and futures on indexes and equities expire. With options expiring, volume on U.S. exchanges jumped to 16.6 billion shares, far above the 11.9 billion average over the last 20 trading days on Friday.
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