Nasdaq 100 posts worst day since June as AI spending doubts hit tech stocks

The Nasdaq 100 fell 3.4% in afternoon trading on Friday, October 30, 2026, its worst one-day drop since mid-June. NBC News reported that more than $1 trillion in value disappeared from tech companies in the process. The index moved close to correction territory, a decline of 10% or more from its last record high. The broader S&P 500 dropped 1.8%, and the S&P's tech sector was the worst performer of the day, falling more than 4.2%. NBC reporter Steve Kopack tied the sell-off to a simple question: trillion-dollar tech companies are spending hundreds of billions of dollars on AI data centers, and investors want clearer signs that the spending is paying off.

The sell-off was set up the day before. On Thursday, Amazon and Intel reported quarterly earnings that failed to reassure investors and analysts. Amazon said its AI build-out spending had continued at a faster pace than expected, while growth in its core online shopping business had slowed. CEO Andy Jassy told shareholders to expect more spending. He said the company still expects 2026 cash capital expenditures of approximately $220 billion, most of it for AWS, and expects to spend meaningfully more in 2027. Amazon's shares fell as much as 10% in post-market trading before recovering during Friday's session, and they ended the day down just 1.4%.

Intel was one of the day's worst performers. Its shares plunged 29%, the worst single-day drop in data dating back to the 1980s, after the company said its fourth-quarter profits and sales would be lower than expected. CEO Lip-Bu Tan cited supply chain issues. On the earnings call he said, "I'm disappointed that we were not able to meet strong customer demand in this quarter." The U.S. government took a stake in Intel during its turnaround and is now the company's largest shareholder. NBC noted that even after Friday's drop, the value of that stake has grown by 280%. Intel's decline spread through the chip sector. SanDisk fell 13%. AMD, ARM Holdings, Qualcomm and Marvell each fell around 10%. The Philadelphia semiconductor index sank 7.2%, and a memory and storage ETF tumbled 7%.

The damage reached beyond chipmakers. So-called neocloud firms, which build data centers for software companies to use, saw Nebius and CoreWeave drop more than 10%. The Nasdaq Composite, which tracks more than 3,000 companies, fell 2.8%. Alphabet's losses came the day before. The Google parent shed about $500 billion in market value on Thursday, its worst day ever and the second-worst wipeout of value in market history. It dropped another 1.4% on Friday.

NBC's reporting suggests investors have changed how they read AI spending. When Amazon last raised its AI budget, the market rewarded it with shares up more than 15%. NBC said that three months later the mood has shifted. Some large companies that pay to use AI models have tightened their token budgets, and others have questioned how much benefit they are getting from the time and resources they spend on AI adoption.

NBC also linked the sell-off to the bond market. Tech stocks falling appeared to increase demand for U.S. Treasuries and briefly pushed yields lower. Over the longer run, though, AI companies borrowing hundreds of billions of dollars for data center build-outs have drawn on debt markets, creating more competition for capital. Because those companies increasingly offer lenders better returns than U.S. government bonds, Treasury yields have risen in recent months, partly to keep pace with the private market.