Technology shares fell sharply again on Friday, October 30, as disappointing earnings from Amazon and Intel deepened investor doubts about the huge sums being poured into artificial intelligence. The sell-off capped a volatile week for markets and a bruising month for the AI trade, with the Nasdaq Composite closing at its worst single-day drop since June.
The technology-heavy Nasdaq Composite fell 2.7 percent in midday trading in New York and closed down 2.86 percent at 25,437.00. The S&P 500 fell 1.82 percent to 7,580.07, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average shed 572.25 points, or 1.09 percent, to finish at 51,770.31, with defensive sectors limiting losses on the blue-chip index. Trading turned more disorderly in the afternoon as investors trimmed positions ahead of next week’s midterm elections and digested a mixed batch of technology earnings.
Key Takeaways
- The Nasdaq Composite fell 2.86 percent on Friday to close at 25,437.00, its worst single-day drop since June.
- Intel plunged around 30 percent after warning that the AI boom is squeezing its personal computer market, while Amazon fell after missing profit and revenue expectations.
- Investors are now asking when enormous AI infrastructure spending will turn into cash returns, a question that also drove Amazon’s share fall despite AWS growing 39 percent.
Intel leads the fall as chip stocks slide
Intel was the day’s biggest casualty. Its shares plunged around 30 percent after the chipmaker acknowledged that the AI boom was slowing its key market for personal computers by driving up the price of memory chips. The company also issued a weak outlook linked to softer personal-computer demand, with revenue in its client computing and physical artificial intelligence group down 5 percent year on year to $8.1 billion.
Chipmakers were broadly weaker. Nvidia shed 4.6 percent, Micron fell 5.9 percent and AMD tumbled 11.7 percent, while Broadcom dropped around 5 percent. Sandisk slid 13 percent despite beating fiscal first-quarter estimates, as the company unveiled an eight-for-one forward stock split. Shares in Google’s parent company Alphabet fell a further 1.8 percent after heavy selling on Thursday that wiped billions of euros off its value.
The debate is no longer whether AI matters, but how quickly it pays.
Amazon misses expectations despite cloud strength
Amazon’s shares dropped 5.5 percent at the start of trading in New York after it missed analyst expectations for profits and revenue, although they pared losses during the morning session. The reaction underlined how unforgiving the market has become: even strong cloud growth is no longer enough on its own when the bill for AI infrastructure keeps rising.
That tension ran through the whole week. Big technology companies are returning the smallest share of cash to shareholders in 15 years as AI spending climbs, and investors are now weighing expanding AI budgets against the profits and productivity those investments may deliver. Meta Platforms, Alphabet and Amazon have all raised spending forecasts further as they race to expand AI infrastructure, sharpening scrutiny of the billions of dollars going into the technology.
Focus is also turning to Tuesday’s US midterm elections and the impact they could have on the final two years of Donald Trump’s presidency, adding a political reason for investors to reduce risk into the weekend.
- Nasdaq Composite: down 2.86 percent to 25,437.00, its worst single-day drop since June.
- S&P 500: down 1.82 percent to 7,580.07; Dow Jones: down 572.25 points, or 1.09 percent, to 51,770.31.
- Intel: down around 30 percent; AMD: down 11.7 percent; Nvidia: down 4.6 percent; Micron: down 5.9 percent.
- Amazon: down 5.5 percent at the New York open after missing profit and revenue expectations.
- Bitcoin: down 5 percent to $77,167 after Binance reported a major hacking attack.
Crypto and oil add to the unease
Bitcoin tumbled at the same time, falling 5 percent to $77,167 after trading platform Binance said it had fallen victim to a major hacking attack. Analysts warned it could be the biggest hacking of its kind in the world, and the episode fed the wider mood of caution across risk assets.
Oil moved the other way. Prices climbed around 2 percent on Friday on renewed supply fears after Iran said four tankers hit mines in the Strait of Hormuz. Shares in ExxonMobil rose 1.9 percent after it reported that its third-quarter profits had more than doubled to $15.4 billion on higher oil prices and refining margins due to the US-Iran war.
A bruising month for the AI trade
Friday’s falls did not come out of nowhere. October proved volatile for the artificial intelligence trade, with investors scrutinising capital spending plans across the sector. Hyperscalers Alphabet and Microsoft did not lift capital expenditure forecasts, while heavily leveraged neocloud operators faced mounting questions over debt loads. CoreWeave’s shares slumped 37 percent in October and Nebius nearly 35 percent as funding costs rose.
For the month, the Nasdaq dropped 5.3 percent, its steepest decline since March 2025. The previous session had already rattled the market after Alphabet posted its worst day on record on a miss for third-quarter earnings and revenue and negative free cash flow of $9.07 billion, dragging the Nasdaq lower. 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 S-1 filing earlier in the week.
The debate is no longer whether AI matters, but how quickly it pays. Companies are spending at a pace that would have seemed extreme only a few years ago, and the market is now demanding evidence that the returns will follow. Until that evidence arrives, even good results can be punished, and weak ones can trigger falls of the size Intel suffered on Friday.
What to Watch Next
What to watch next is whether the sell-off stabilises ahead of Tuesday’s midterm elections, whether the next round of technology earnings gives investors clearer evidence that AI spending is converting into revenue and cash flow, and whether chip stocks recover once memory-chip prices stop squeezing personal-computer demand. The coming week will show whether Friday was a reset for the AI trade or the start of a longer repricing.