Tech rout: Nasdaq -2.1%, SNOW -8.43%, AMD -5.95%; futures bounce
Software and chips led a 2.1% Nasdaq fall Friday as 63 of 100 names fell; energy and staples rose. Oil eased on a Russia sanctions pause. NAHB index 10 a.m. ET.
Friday was the day software and chips fell together. The Nasdaq Composite dropped 2.1% to 26,140.03, the S&P 500 1.1% to 7,659.44 and the Dow 0.3% to 52,002.41, per AP, and 63 of the 100 stocks and funds we track fell. The selling concentrated in the application-software names that had been Thursday’s winners, Snowflake down 8.43% and Palantir 7.22%, and in the chip names that had already fallen all week, AMD down 5.95%, Intel 5.79% and Micron 5.63%, while energy, staples and utilities rose. For the week the Nasdaq lost 4.5%, its worst since June, and the S&P 500 nearly 2%, per CNBC. Overnight Korea’s Kospi rebounded 1.8%, Paris fell about 1% after weekend protests, Brent eased 2.5% after Washington paused new sanctions on Russia, and Nasdaq-100 futures were up about 1.3% around 3:30 a.m. ET, per Bloomberg. Today is the quiet day of a loud week: the NAHB builder index at 10 a.m. ET and Fifth Third before the open, with Netflix on Tuesday, Meta and Tesla on Wednesday, and the Fed in its pre-meeting blackout.
Software and chips were sold together, and that is the change
Thursday’s rotation into software lasted one session. Snowflake (SNOW) fell 8.43% to $306.84 from $335.07 on 8.8 million shares, the largest fall among the 100 names we track, after closing unchanged on Thursday. MongoDB (MDB) fell 7.89% to $337.57 from $366.49, Palo Alto Networks (PANW) 7.63% to $342.00 from $370.27, Palantir (PLTR) 7.22% to $186.03 from $200.50 on 33.3 million shares, Datadog (DDOG) 7.19% to $247.11 from $266.25, CrowdStrike (CRWD) 7.02% to $227.39 from $244.57 and Cloudflare (NET) 6.33% to $296.30 from $316.32. Thursday’s leaders gave it all back and more: ServiceNow (NOW) fell 4.44% to $141.97 from $148.57 after opening at $151.92, below Thursday’s 6.14% gain; Adobe (ADBE) fell 2.57% to $245.20 and Salesforce (CRM) 2.45% to $240.70, each after a 4.57% rise on Thursday; Oracle (ORCL) fell 4.64% to $128.23 from $134.47 on 36.0 million shares and Shopify (SHOP) 4.84% to $169.52. Yahoo Finance counted 41 of 45 software stocks in its basket lower, erasing about $130 billion, with the software fund IGV down nearly 3%. Several wraps attributed the software selling to worries that AI could cannibalise traditional software and professional-services providers; AP’s wrap cites doubts about how long the AI buildout lasts and whether AI companies that have relied on debt markets keep borrowing with bond yields at multi-year highs.
The chip names fell again. AMD (AMD) fell 5.95% to $528.75 from $562.23 on 22.5 million shares, Intel (INTC) 5.79% to $89.85 from $95.37 on 122.3 million shares, Micron (MU) 5.63% to $878.84 from $931.24 after Thursday’s 1.87% gain, Applied Materials (AMAT) 4.82% to $409.29 from $430.01, a fourth straight fall, Broadcom (AVGO) 4.52% to $328.75 from $344.33 on 29.7 million shares, Arm (ARM) 6.94% to $227.80 from $244.79 after Thursday’s 2.85% rise, Qualcomm (QCOM) 3.53% to $172.11 and Nvidia (NVDA) 1.43% to $214.13 from $217.23 on 120.9 million shares. One wrap put the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index down 3.83%, and Yahoo Finance counted 57 of 60 chip stocks in its basket lower. The technology fund XLK fell 3.02% to $183.47 from $189.19 and the Nasdaq-100 fund QQQ 2.50% to $709.80 from $728.00 on 66.7 million shares, on monthly options expiration. After hours the chip losers slipped a little further: Nvidia was quoted at $213.75, Micron at $875.98, Intel at $89.33 and AMD at $527.09, per the extended-hours feed.
The megacaps fell with them, though less. Meta (META) fell 3.72% to $709.33 from $736.72 ahead of its Wednesday report, Alphabet (GOOGL) 2.47% to $340.59 from $349.22, Microsoft (MSFT) 1.93% to $529.05 from $539.44, Amazon (AMZN) 1.87% to $250.00, Tesla (TSLA) 2.13% to $354.72 from $362.44 after opening at $369.15, and Netflix (NFLX) 2.86% to $70.53 from $72.61 on 44.1 million shares after the company replaced its chief content officer and moved to cut about 6% of staff, per AP; it reports Tuesday after the close. Apple (AAPL) was the exception, up 0.43% to $343.46 on 59.9 million shares, though it opened at $346.09 and faded. Cisco (CSCO) fell 2.24% to $107.39, a second day after disclosing the exploited email-gateway flaw.
The risk-appetite names that rebounded on Thursday were sold again: Coinbase (COIN) fell 5.79% to $173.16 from $183.81, Robinhood (HOOD) 4.92% to $98.87 from $103.99, Roblox (RBLX) 3.09%, Affirm (AFRM) 2.52%, Block (SQ) 2.43% and Reddit (RDDT) 2.02%; Rivian (RIVN) fell 4.61% to $12.42. The small-cap fund IWM fell 1.69% to $270.44 from $275.08, the S&P 500 fund SPY 1.11% to $763.25 from $771.79 on 64.0 million shares and the Dow fund DIA 0.40% to $519.10. For the week, Bloomberg put the Nasdaq-100’s slide at about 5.5%.
Where the money went: energy, staples, utilities and the big banks
The 37 of the 100 names that rose were almost all defensives and energy. Chevron (CVX) rose 2.59% to $224.99 from $219.32, Exxon (XOM) 2.46% to $178.98 from $174.68 on 13.2 million shares and the energy fund XLE 2.52% to $68.24 from $66.56, reversing Thursday’s 1.58% fall, on the day Brent settled 3.7% higher at $109.86, per AP. In the movers feed the gainers were dominated by oil and gas producers, Crescent Energy, Matador, Antero, Ovintiv and Murphy among them. RTX (RTX) rose 3.73% to $193.92 from $186.95, the largest gain in our 100; it reports Tuesday before the open, and we found no confirmed news for the move.
Staples and utilities rose together: PepsiCo (PEP) 2.42% to $131.49 from $128.38, reversing Thursday’s 0.69% fall, Coca-Cola (KO) 2.07% to $93.90, Altria (MO) 1.72% to $75.11, Procter & Gamble (PG) 1.45% to $159.35, Costco (COST) 1.13% to $989.11, Walmart (WMT) 0.80% to $118.81, Duke Energy (DUK) 2.18% to $121.47 from $118.88, NextEra (NEE) 1.06% to $79.80 and American Tower (AMT) 2.16% to $185.27. The big banks held up while the brokers fell: JPMorgan (JPM) rose 1.25% to $339.72 from $335.53, Wells Fargo (WFC) 1.35% to $83.87, Citigroup (C) 0.85%, BlackRock (BLK) 1.21% to $1,134.38, Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.B) 1.21% to $532.02 and the financial fund XLF 0.45% to $55.52, while Goldman Sachs (GS) fell 1.12% to $881.26, Morgan Stanley (MS) 0.84% and Bank of America (BAC) 0.91% to $51.23 on 64.3 million shares. Healthcare was mixed and the healthcare fund XLV fell 0.27%: Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) rose 0.90%, AbbVie (ABBV) 0.71%, Merck (MRK) 0.52% and Eli Lilly (LLY) 0.43% to $1,257.03, while UnitedHealth (UNH) fell 1.29% to $401.43 after trading as low as $395.52 and Thermo Fisher (TMO) 0.93%. AP counted all but seven of the 75 technology stocks in the S&P 500 lower, with slightly more than half of the index’s stocks down, so this was a sector sale, not a market one; the Dow fund DIA’s 0.40% fall against the Nasdaq-100 fund QQQ’s 2.50% says the same.
Rates and oil: a 5% ten-year, a Fed in blackout, and a sanctions pause
The 10-year Treasury yield closed Friday near 5.09%, from 5.10% on Thursday, per AP, after Thursday’s 12-basis-point drop; it had topped 5.30% earlier in October, its highest since 2002. The long-dated Treasury fund TLT rose 0.10% to $80.05 and the gold fund GLD slipped 0.18% to $382.01. Early Monday the 10-year eased to about 5.07%, per AP. The Fed raised its policy rate a quarter point to about 3.9% in September, and CME Group futures priced a 74.3% chance of another hike in December, up from 50.2% a month earlier, per AP. The committee meets October 27–28, and its blackout period runs through the meeting, per Kiplinger, so no Fed official speaks this week. That leaves the bond market to read last week’s data on its own: a 3.7% CPI on Wednesday and a 6.3% PPI on Thursday, as covered in Thursday’s and Friday’s briefings.
Oil is the other half of the rates story. Brent settled 3.7% higher at $109.86 on Friday, its highest since May, versus about $72 in late February, as Iran escalated attacks around the Strait of Hormuz, per AP and Yahoo Finance; the US average gasoline price is $4.33 a gallon against $3.06 a year ago. Late Friday President Trump signed an executive order putting new broad US sanctions on Russia on hold, days before they were due to take effect, a move Ukraine criticised and that is likely to raise Russian energy exports, per AP. Early Monday Brent was down 2.5% at $107.16 and WTI 2.2% at $96.84. Reuters quoted Brent at $108.80, down 0.96%, earlier in the Asian session, so the figure depends on the hour; both benchmarks remain up more than 40% this year. If the oil move holds through the US session it cuts both ways for Friday’s winners: the energy names that rose on $110 Brent and the inflation worry that has pushed the 10-year above 5%.
Overnight: Korea rebounded, Jakarta fell again, Paris fell on protests
Asia was split along the same chip line. Korea’s Kospi rose 1.8% to 5,768.01, with Samsung Electronics up 1.2% and SK Hynix 0.4%, though the index is down more than 17% over the past month from a June peak above 9,000, per AP. Japan’s Nikkei 225 fell 0.6% to 64,916.70, with Tokyo Electron down 2.6% and SoftBank 2%. China’s Shanghai Composite rose 0.4% to 3,730.92 after third-quarter growth of 4.5% beat expectations, while memory maker CXMT fell more than 7% despite a strong profit forecast. Australia’s ASX 200 rose 0.4% to 8,845.70, Taiwan’s Taiex fell 0.6% and India’s Sensex 0.9%. Hong Kong was closed for a holiday. Indonesia fell more than 5% at its intraday low, its lowest since 2020, after Friday’s drop of more than 11% on MSCI’s warning that it could move the market to standalone status; Reuters reported the Jakarta exchange meets MSCI on Monday to seek clarification, and MSCI’s final decision is due by June 30, 2027. The dollar was at 157.98 yen from 158.10, and the euro at $1.1218 from $1.1234, per AP.
Europe opened lower, led by France. The Stoxx 600 was down 0.39% at 7:08 GMT and the CAC 40 1.02%, per Reuters via Investing.com, after Saturday’s nationwide cost-of-living protests, which the interior ministry put at about 550,000 people with some 1,800 arrests; other reports cite at least 2,400 arrests, so the counts differ. The DAX was down between 0.4% and 0.77% depending on the snapshot. Moody’s reviews France’s rating on Friday. US futures were higher: Bloomberg had Nasdaq-100 futures up 1.3% and S&P 500 futures 0.7% at 7:29 GMT, while CNBC’s live blog showed Nasdaq-100 futures up 1.32%, Dow futures 0.53% and S&P 500 futures 0.2%, so the S&P figure depends on the hour. The extended-hours feed carried no Monday premarket prices for the chip names at the time of writing, only Friday’s after-hours quotes above.
What to watch today
- NAHB Housing Market Index for October at 10:00 a.m. ET, consensus 31 after 32 in September, per Trading Economics. It is the only US release of the day. September housing starts and building permits follow Tuesday at 8:30 a.m. ET.
- Before the open: Fifth Third (FITB), consensus $1.09 a share against $0.93 a year ago, call at 9:00 a.m. ET, and Cleveland-Cliffs (CLF), per StockTitan and Newsquawk.
- After the close: W.R. Berkley (WRB), consensus $1.14; Steel Dynamics (STLD), consensus $5.42 against $2.74 a year ago; AGNC Investment (AGNC); Crown Holdings (CCK); and the regional banks Zions (ZION), Western Alliance (WAL), Wintrust (WTFC) and BOK Financial (BOKF), per StockTitan.
- The rest of the week: Tuesday, GE Aerospace, GM, RTX, Northrop Grumman, 3M and Halliburton before the open, Netflix, Intuitive Surgical and Capital One after; Wednesday, Thermo Fisher, AT&T, Abbott and Philip Morris before, Meta, Tesla, Texas Instruments, IBM and Lam Research after; Thursday, Procter & Gamble, Lockheed Martin, Comcast and Blackstone before, with jobless claims at 8:30 a.m. ET; Friday, American Express and SLB before, flash PMIs at 9:45 a.m. and final October Michigan sentiment at 10:00 a.m. ET, per StockTitan, Newsquawk and Kiplinger. The FOMC meets October 27–28 and Intel reports October 29.
- Treasury bill auctions: 3-month and 6-month bills at 11:30 a.m. ET, per Trading Economics.
- Oil through the US session after the Russia sanctions pause: Brent at $107.16 and WTI at $96.84 early Monday, against Friday’s $109.86 Brent settlement.
- Jakarta’s meeting with MSCI and any statement on the consultation, after a second day of losses.
- Friday’s after-hours quotes for the chip losers, Nvidia $213.75, Micron $875.98, Intel $89.33 and AMD $527.09, against Nasdaq-100 futures up more than 1%.
Not financial advice. iTrading Buddy summarizes publicly available market data and news; every figure above is sourced from the reporting available before the US open on the date shown. Verify anything you act on.