Nasdaq Suffers Worst Day Since June as Intel Crashes and Amazon Misses, Deepening AI Spending Fears

Wall Street ended October with a sharp sell-off on Friday, October 30, as disappointing earnings from Intel and Amazon deepened investor doubts about the huge sums companies are spending on artificial intelligence. The Nasdaq Composite tumbled 2.86 per cent to close at 25,437.00, its worst single-day drop since June, while the S&P 500 fell 1.82 per cent to 7,580.07 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average shed 572.25 points, or 1.09 per cent, to finish at 51,770.31.

The falls capped a bruising week for the technology stocks that have led the market for much of the year. Trading turned more disorderly in the afternoon as investors trimmed positions ahead of Tuesday’s US midterm elections and digested a mixed batch of technology earnings, rotating instead toward defensive stocks perceived as safer havens.

Why Intel’s Warning Hit So Hard

Intel was the day’s biggest casualty. The chipmaker sank almost 30 per cent after issuing a weak outlook linked to softer demand in its key personal-computer market, acknowledging that the AI boom is driving up the price of memory chips and slowing that business. Revenue in its client computing and physical artificial intelligence group fell 5 per cent year on year to $8.1 billion.

The rout spread quickly across semiconductors. Advanced Micro Devices fell close to 11 per cent, Nvidia dropped about 4 per cent, Broadcom fell around 5 per cent and Micron slid 5.9 per cent. Sandisk slid 13 per cent despite beating fiscal first-quarter estimates, as the company unveiled an eight-for-one forward stock split. The breadth of the selling underlined how a single weak outlook can reprice a whole chain of AI-linked suppliers at once.

That pattern is not new to this market. An earlier software sell-off this week showed the same nervousness about AI spending, and Friday’s falls extended it from software into chips and hardware.

• Intel: down almost 30 per cent on a weak outlook and softer PC demand.
• AMD: down close to 11 per cent; Nvidia down about 4 per cent; Broadcom down around 5 per cent.
• Micron: down 5.9 per cent as memory-chip costs rose on AI demand.
• Sandisk: down 13 per cent despite beating estimates, after announcing an eight-for-one split.

Amazon’s Miss Added to the Anxiety

Amazon dropped 5.5 per cent at the start of trading in New York after it missed analyst expectations for profits and revenue, although it pared losses during the morning session to close down more than 1 per cent. The company reported negative free cash flow of $42.4 billion while keeping its 2026 capital expenditure guidance at $220 billion, a figure that sharpened investor doubts about how quickly AI spending will pay off.

Alphabet, Google’s parent company, fell a further 1.8 per cent after heavy selling on Thursday that followed its own earnings miss and negative free cash flow of $9.07 billion. Microsoft, Meta and Alphabet each fell 1 to 2 per cent on Friday after significant declines earlier in the week. The question investors are now asking is not whether artificial intelligence will matter, but when the spending will start to pay for itself.

The question investors are now asking is not whether artificial intelligence will matter, but when the spending will start to pay for itself.

Sentiment was further pressured by a report that Blackstone had told investors Anthropic may not secure an investment-grade rating at debut, blunting some of the optimism that followed the AI firm’s IPO filing earlier in the week. The steep losses on Friday reversed optimism earlier in the week prompted by that filing, and showed how quickly the mood can turn when earnings disappoint.

A Brutal October for the AI Trade

For the month as a whole, the Nasdaq dropped 5.3 per cent, its steepest decline since March 2025. The S&P 500 slipped 0.9 per cent for October, while the Dow gained 1.7 per cent, helped by gains in defensive sectors. Walmart and Coca-Cola each rose more than 1 per cent on Friday, while Merck and Amgen also advanced, as investors moved away from higher-risk growth names.

The pain was sharpest in the leveraged “neocloud” operators at the heart of the AI buildout. CoreWeave’s shares slumped 37 per cent in October and Nebius nearly 35 per cent as funding costs rose. The Roundhill Memory ETF, which holds AI-linked memory names including Micron and Seagate Technology, fell 20 per cent in the month, and the iShares AI Innovation and Tech Active ETF declined nearly 17 per cent.

The sell-off was not confined to the United States. South Korea’s tech-heavy Kospi index closed out its week down 3.5 per cent and Tokyo finished with a 2.0 per cent loss, while Hong Kong closed up 1.5 per cent. London’s tech-light FTSE 100 edged higher, helped by strong earnings from drugs giant AstraZeneca and oil major BP. Even as Apple overtook Nvidia as the world’s most valuable company this week, the wider technology trade still ended October firmly on the defensive.

The scale of the spending behind the trade remains the central issue. Hyperscalers Alphabet and Microsoft did not lift capital expenditure forecasts, while questions over debt loads and funding costs grew for the most leveraged AI operators. Microsoft’s planned $25 billion bond sale to fund AI spending is a reminder that much of this buildout is being financed, not just funded from cash flow, which is why negative free cash flow figures at Amazon and Alphabet drew so much attention.

What to Watch Next

What to watch next is whether the technology sell-off stabilises or extends into the new trading month, whether Tuesday’s US midterm elections change the political backdrop for markets, and whether next week’s earnings, including Apple and Palantir, restore confidence or add to the doubts about AI spending. Investors will also watch whether defensive stocks keep outperforming growth names, whether memory-chip prices keep squeezing personal-computer demand, and whether the AI operators most exposed to rising funding costs can steady their shares after a brutal October.