On Friday, US Eastern Time, all three major US stock indices closed lower.
Weighed down by earnings reports released after Thursday's close from Intel and Amazon.com, technology stocks came under heavy selling pressure, with the Nasdaq falling nearly 3% and logging its largest single-day drop since June 5.
By the close, the S&P 500 fell 1.82% to 7,580.07 points; the Nasdaq Composite dropped 2.86% to 25,437 points; and the Dow Jones Industrial Average declined 1.09% to 51,770.31 points.
Large-cap technology stocks fell across the board. SpaceX dropped 6.39%, NVIDIA fell more than 4%, while Microsoft, Facebook, Amazon.com, Google, and Apple each slid more than 1%, and Tesla declined 0.87%.
Apple Reclaims Global Market Cap Crown from NVIDIA
Notably, Apple on Friday reclaimed the title of the world's most valuable company from NVIDIA.
That day, Apple shares fell 1.2%, reducing its market capitalization to $5.03 trillion; NVIDIA dropped 4.2%, closing with a market value of $4.93 trillion.
This marks another instance of Apple overtaking NVIDIA since briefly doing so in late July.
Market analysts believe that recent earnings from companies such as Intel and Amazon.com have intensified concerns over returns on massive AI capital expenditures. By contrast, Apple's relatively restrained infrastructure investment and strong free cash flow have given it relative resilience amid the technology stock correction.
So far this year, Apple shares have risen more than 27%.
On the news front, on October 31, Apple and Alibaba announced a partnership to integrate Qwen into Apple Intelligence, allowing Chinese users to directly access Qwen's text and image understanding, content generation, and other capabilities within Siri, writing tools, and visual intelligence.
These features will open for testing starting November 4 with the latest iOS developer Beta and will be rolled out to Chinese users with the official release of iOS 27.3 in December.
Intel Plunges, Chip Sector Hit Hard
On Friday, Intel shares plummeted 28.58%, marking its second-largest single-day drop on record, surpassed only by the 29.9% decline on July 5, 1974.
It is reported that a shortage of memory chips has driven up component costs, dragging down PC sales, and Intel's fourth-quarter guidance disappointed the market.
The company's Chief Financial Officer, David Zinsner, said the PC market slowdown is expected to last at least through the first half of next year.
Intel's stock plunge also dragged down the entire chip sector. The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index fell 7.2%. SanDisk dropped 13.47%, SK Hynix fell 7.95%, and Micron Technology declined 5.3%.
On the news front, a previous round of earnings from Intel, Alphabet, and Meta Platforms in AI infrastructure fell short of expectations, pushing their share prices below the purchase prices of investors who participated in their stock offerings in recent months.
The selloff began on Wednesday when Alphabet reported earnings, with the company's advertising revenue from search and other channels falling short of expectations; subsequently, Intel disclosed supply chain problems in data center components, further intensifying market concerns.
The recent performance of both companies highlights market doubts about whether massive AI investments can be sustained.
Market analysts believe the market is already struggling to absorb large-scale AI-related stock offerings and is also assessing whether huge investments can translate into long-term stock gains.
Falling stock prices will further increase the difficulty for companies to raise needed capital and make the outlook for whether Anthropic can meet or exceed the fundraising scale of SpaceX's record-breaking listing earlier this year in its IPO even more uncertain.
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