Dec 2, 2018 - Economy

The stock market's data-breach discount

Felix Salmon

CNBC's Carl Quintanilla passes along a Morgan Stanley report that has quantified the amount that stocks fall after a data breach is made public.

Driving the news: Marriott was above average. It fell 5.6% on Friday, after a data breach that could have affected as many as 500 million customers. That's more than the 4% one-day decline Morgan Stanley has calculated after looking at Target, Home Depot, Yahoo, Heartland Payment and Anthem.

Expect Marriott to pay a hefty fine under Europe's GDPR rules.
Don't expect a bounce on Monday. After a week, those companies were down even further: 6%, on average, from their pre-disclosure level.

One company that saw no decline in its share price this week: The U.S. Postal Service, which exposed the data of 60 million customers. That's one advantage of being state-owned, I guess.

Go deeper: Behind the Marriott breach's "500 million affected" tally

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The stock market's data-breach discount

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