Stock market today: Wall Street's worst day since June as Intel crashes 28.6%
The Nasdaq fell 2.9% and the S&P 500 1.8% on Friday as AI worries hit tech. Why Intel sank, where Bitcoin and oil went, and what it means for Pakistan.
US stocks had their worst day since June on Friday, 30 October, as selling in technology companies spread and investors questioned whether the huge sums being spent on artificial intelligence will ever pay back. The Nasdaq Composite dropped 747.73 points, or 2.9%, to 25,437.00, and the S&P 500 lost 1.8% to 7,580.07.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 572.25 points, or 1.1%, to 51,770.31. The market closed at 1 AM Saturday Pakistan time. For the S&P 500 it was a third losing week in a row, and the index now sits 3.1% below the record it set earlier this month.
Why Intel fell 28.6%
Intel was the headline. Its shares lost 28.6%, the steepest one-day fall since 1974, even though its latest quarterly profit came in better than analysts expected. The problem was the outlook: the company forecast weaker profit for the final three months of the year, and its chief executive said the PC industry remains under pressure, with higher memory-chip costs weighing on demand.
Nvidia fell 4.2%, and because it is so large, it dragged the S&P 500 down more than Intel did. Amazon slipped 1.4% after its summer profit missed forecasts. The company said it had burned through $42.4 billion of free cash flow over the past 12 months while spending $94.8 billion on property and equipment, much of it for AI data centres. A day earlier, Alphabet had its worst day on record, falling more than 12% after reporting heavier AI spending.
“Show me” phase for AI
Joe Tigay, a portfolio manager at Equity Armor Investments, summed up the mood: “We’re moving out of the hopes and dreams phase of the AI trade and into the ‘show me’ phase.”
Not everything fell. Nearly as many S&P 500 companies rose as dropped. Mondelez gained 3.9%, ExxonMobil 2.2% and Chevron 1.8% after beating profit forecasts. The 10-year US Treasury yield eased to 4.93% from 4.98% as money moved into government bonds.
Bitcoin below $77,000, oil above $113
Crypto had a rough day as well. Bitcoin dropped below $77,000, down from more than $86,000 earlier in October, as the record $6 billion-plus hack of the Binance exchange added to the gloom. Coinbase shares fell 10.6% and Strategy, which holds about 4% of all Bitcoin, lost 7.8%.
Brent crude went the other way, rising 2.4% to $113.43 a barrel, close to the top of its range since the war with Iran began.
In Asia, South Korea’s Kospi fell 3.5% and Japan’s Nikkei 225 2.1%, while Hong Kong’s Hang Seng rose 1.5%.
What it means for Pakistan
The Pakistan Stock Exchange had already lost ground on Friday: the KSE-100 closed at 166,409.25, down 0.47%, as profit-taking ended a four-day rally. A global tech sell-off on its own rarely moves Karachi much, but foreign investors who sell risky assets across emerging markets can, and Monday’s open will show whether that happens.
The bigger worry for ordinary Pakistanis is oil. Brent above $110 keeps pressure on petrol and diesel prices, which the government now resets every few days, and on the import bill that weighs on the rupee. For freelancers and IT exporters, a cooling of AI spending by US tech giants is worth watching, since that money funds much of the software work outsourced abroad.
Pakistani crypto holders should note that trading rules here are still being set by the Pakistan Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority, so protections are limited if a foreign exchange runs into trouble.
This is information, not investment advice.
