US indices declined rather steadily on Friday, dropping by about 2% amid the ongoing phenomenal situation with GameStop and AMC Entertainment.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell by 2.03% and reached 29981.10 points, while the S&P 500 decreased by 1.93% and hit 3714.21 points. As for the NASDAQ Composite, the index dropped by 2% and closed at 13070.69 points.

So, all in all, over the previous week, DJIA declined by 3.2%, S&P 500 collapsed by 3.3% and Nasdaq Composite shrunk by 3.5%. And, over the month, DJIA lost 2%, S&P 500 lost 1.1% and Nasdaq Composite lost 1.7%. Clearly, the past week was the worst for the US market since October 2020.

Apparently, the reason for these declines was the uncontrolled volatility of shares of GameStop, AMC Entertainment and other companies that surged in value last week.

Just last Friday, stocks of GameStop grew again by about 68%, hitting $ 325 due to the confrontation between small investors and large hedge funds. Over the year, the cost increased by 1625.1%. Robinhood said it currently permits purchases of GameStop's shares in its platform, however, it is in a limited amount.

Shares of AMC Entertainment also increased by 53.65%, reaching $ 13.26 per share. During the week, their cost increased by 278%.

Meanwhile, stocks of Amazon, Apple, Alphabet, Microsoft and Facebook dropped by 1%, 3.7%, 1.4% 2.9% and 2.5% respectively.

Shares of Caterpillar also decreased by 0.8%, even though the company reported profit that exceeded market expectations and a revenue that was in line with forecasts.

The same scenario happened with Visa. Stocks declined by 2.5% even amid better-than-expected profits and revenues.

Shares of Qualtrics International also sank by 3.3%, even if the day before, a division of the German corporation placed shares for $ 1.55 billion during an IPO.

As for economic statistics, the US Department of Commerce reported that income of Americans rose for the first time in 3 months, increasing by 0.6%, while spending decreased by 0.2%. Experts predict that this situation will happen again, but this time by about 0.1% and 0.4% respectively.

With regards to consumer confidence, the University of Michigan said it dropped to 79 points in January, a bit lower than the 80.7 points last December. The preliminary index was 79.2 points, and analysts did not expect this revision.