Start of January trading

U.S. stock indices fell sharply in late January trading, with the Dow and S&P 500 indicators suffering their biggest losses in a month since October amid volatility due to fears of a market bubble over the performance of GameStop Corp (NYSE:GME) and AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc. shares.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average index fell 620.74 points (2.03%) to 29982.62 points, falling to its lowest since December 14. The Standard Poor's 500 fell 73.14 points (1.93%) to 3,714.24 points. The Nasdaq Composite lost 266.46 points (2%) to 13070.69 points.

For the week, the Dow lost 3.2%, the S&P 500 lost 3.3% and the Nasdaq Composite lost 3.5%. For the month, the Dow was down 2%, the S&P 500 was down 1.1% and the Nasdaq Composite was down 1.7%. The past week was also the worst for the market since October.

GameStop shares jumped another 67.9% on Friday, up 1,625.1% for the year.

Trading platform Robinhood said it was allowing limited purchases of the company's shares. A day earlier, Robinhood had banned trading in GameStop and other companies whose shares had begun to be bought by individual investors.

CIBC Private Wealth investment director David Donabedian said: "The market has been distracted by excessive volatility in a number of stocks that no one thought of a week ago".

AMC Entertainment Holdings shares jumped 53.7%. During the week their value rose 278%.

Shares of Amazon Inc (NASDAQ:AMZN). lost about 1%, Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) down 3.7%, Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL) Inc. 1.4%, Microsoft Corp (NASDAQ:MSFT). 2.9%, Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB). 2,5%.

Caterpillar Inc (NYSE:CAT). share price decreased 0.8%. The manufacturer of road construction and mining equipment posted Q4 2020 earnings above market expectations, while revenue was in line with forecasts.

Visa Inc (NYSE:V). shares were down 2.5%. The operator of the largest U.S. payment system cut profit and revenue in Q1 fiscal 2021, but the performance beat market expectations despite a continued drop in cross-border payments on its system.

Qualtrics International Inc.'s stock price was down 3.3%. The day before, the German enterprise management software unit SAP SE floated $1.55 billion in an IPO.