wall street stocks fell early wednesday threatening a threeday rally as markets digested inconclusive us election results as well as disappointing disney earnings equities had risen the last three days on expectations that republicans would win at least one chamber of congress from president bidens democratic party leading to a gridlock scenario thought to be benign for stocks as of early wednesday with ballots still being counted in dozens of races republicans appeared poised to win the house of representatives but by a much narrower margin than expected after a red wave failed to materialize and democrats outperformed the party that holds the white house traditionally loses big in the midterm elections what we are seeing in the stock market this morning is some sellthenews activity said briefingcom analyst patrick ohare the stock market had a nice little run leading up to election day based on the gridlock angle it appears that is going to be the case so participants are taking some money off the table about 20 minutes into trading the dow jones industrial average was down 07 percent at 3291627 the broadbased sp 500 also shed 07 percent to 380027 while the techrich nasdaq composite index dropped 09 percent to 1051744 among individual companies disney plunged 111 percent after reporting weakerthanexpected results as losses at the companys streaming services more than doubled the quarterly operating loss to 15 billion facebookparent meta jumped 61 percent as it announced it will lay off more than 11000 of its staff as adsupported tech firms like facebook and google face macroeconomic headwinds