CHICAGO (NewsNation) — Netflix and Amazon have reported big losses after flourishing at the height of the pandemic.

Amazon reported its first quarterly loss since 2015 on Thursday, its money-making juggernaut stalled by a slowdown in pandemic-induced online shopping and a huge write-down of its investment in an electric-vehicle startup.

The Seattle-based e-commerce giant’s stock fell 9% in after-hours trading.

Amazon reported a loss of $3.84 billion, or $7.56 a share, for the first three months of the year. A year ago, it reported a profit of $8.1 billion, or $15.79 a share, for the first quarter. Wall Street analysts expected a profit of $8.35 a share in the latest quarter, according to FactSet.

The ocean of red ink in Amazon’s report came mostly from the company’s accounting for a $7.6 billion loss in value of its stock investment in Rivian Automotive. Rivian went public in late 2021 and its stock traded at close $180 at one point. It closed Thursday at $32.18. Ford Motor Co. reported a similar write-down of the value of its Rivian investment Wednesday.

Amazon’s e-commerce business also reported an operating loss of $1.57 billion in North America and $1.28 billion internationally.

Similarly, Netflix, whose stock more than tripled between early 2018 and its peak last November, has since lost virtually all that gain, dropping by more than two thirds this year alone for the worst loss in the S&P 500 as of Tuesday.

Netflix began 2022 with a stock price trading at 45.6 times its expected earnings per share over the ensuing 12 months. That was more than double what investors were willing to pay for each $1 of expected earnings from the overall S&P 500.

Investors were comfortable paying such high prices for Netflix and tech stocks generally when interest rates were super-low. They also were willing to stretch for stocks of companies that were able to grow strongly, even when the overall economy was hurting.

But now rates are rising and continued growth looks less assured. Netflix recently reported a drop in its number of subscribers for the first three months of the year, for example, with more losses expected in the spring. People have more options for entertainment now that pandemic restrictions are being relaxed.

While both companies are experiencing similar troubles, Financial Journalist Bethany McLean explained to NewsNation’s “Rush Hour” Friday each company will recover differently.

“What’s happened to Amazon now is really more of a blip, I would say, and more of a probably fixable problem,” McLean said.

“There are some struggles in the retail part of their business but it’s still growing and the part of their business called Amazon Web Services is still phenomenally profitable and showed growth this quarter,” she added.

Netflix’s problems, she tells the program, are more existential.

“The company has always burned through an enormous amount of cash even in good times. They’re facing an incredible amount of competition both from legacy TV studios that started their own streaming businesses and other streaming subscriptions and it’s unclear how they’re going to come out of this,” she said.

Tech-oriented stocks overall have struggled in large part because interest rates have shot to their highest level in years. The 10-year Treasury yield, for example, topped 2.90% recently after starting the year at 1.51%, though it’s receded in recent days. Yields have surged as the Federal Reserve prepares to raise short-term rates sharply to stamp out high inflation. It’s also planning other moves to push longer-term rates upward.

Higher interest rates are a drag on all kinds of investments. Now that a 10-year Treasury is close to offering a real return for the first time since the pandemic, after taking inflation into account, investors can make money by parking in safe bonds. That makes them less willing to pay high prices for riskier investments. High-growth, tech-oriented stocks are now taking the hardest hits because their prices earlier soared the highest.

Stocks of semiconductor companies have also been big laggards this year, partly on worries that demand for smartphones, personal computers and other hardware will flag after sales exploded during the pandemic. An index of semiconductor stocks has dropped 26.3% this year, a sharp fall after it soared more than 40% for three straight years.

When asked why these major, multimillion dollar companies were not able to properly prepare for this type of hit, McLean says it’s human error.

“You would think that that these incredibly well-paid, high-powered people would be able to see around corners but the truth is it’s not human nature to do so. We tend to think that what was true yesterday is going to be true again today and, in fairness to them, there were a lot of people who were saying a lot of the pandemic-era changes were here to stay,” she said.