Overview
- The market's October close saw a sharp tech sell-off that left the Nasdaq down about 5.3% for the month while the Dow posted a roughly 1.7% gain, driven by heavy losses on Friday.
- Intel's revenue outlook triggered one of the company's worst sessions in decades, with shares plunging around 30% and leading broad declines in semiconductor names.
- Investors rotated out of high-growth and crypto-linked stocks and into energy and utilities, with Fidelity data showing communications down about 14%, energy up roughly 11% and utilities up about 9.9% for October.
- Macro forces reinforced the move: the Federal Reserve held rates, the U.S. 10-year Treasury yield rose toward 5.35%, and oil climbed above $100 per barrel on heightened geopolitical risk.
- The sell-off reflects a wider reassessment of whether sustained revenue from AI will justify large, ongoing infrastructure spending, a worry illustrated by steep October drops in firms such as CoreWeave and other capital-intensive cloud providers.