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Apple lost just under $180 billion in market value Thursday, plunging eight per cent, the largest one day loss ever recorded by an American company, Daily Mail reported. 

Stocks suffered their biggest one-day pull-back since March after investors dumped shares in tech giants including Apple and Facebook and data suggested a long and difficult road to economic recovery ahead.

The three main indexes all slumped throughout the day. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 2.8%, to 28,292.73. A day earlier it crossed 29,000 for the first time since February. The S&P 500 index lost 125.78 points to close at 3,455.06. The technology-heavy Nasdaq dropped 598.34 points to 11,458.10.  

In August Apple became the first U.S. company to boast a market value of $2 trillion, just two years after it became the first to reach $1 trillion.

But Wall Street’s unloading of technology shares on Thursday ended with Apple plunging 8 per cent. Amazon lost 4.6 per cent and Facebook gave back 3.8 per cent.

Even with Thursday’s losses, Apple is still up 64.7 per cent for the year, and Amazon is up 82.3 per cent. Zoom’s gain for the year is still a whopping 460.4 per cent.

There seemed to be no explicit catalyst for the sell-off, with economic data coming in roughly where the market had expected and no companies issuing foreboding warnings. But the market felt due for a breather, analysts said.

The S&P technology sector, up more than 30 percent on the year as the best-performing of the 11 major sectors, plunged 5.4 percent by the afternoon as investors looked for cheaper stocks outside the tech sector.

Shares of Facebook, Apple, Amazon.com, Microsoft and Google parent company Alphabet all sank throughout the day.

This marked a massive turnaround for the five stocks, which at the end of August were responsible for buoying Wall Street even in the face of a glum jobs outlook.