WiremarketsDextape brief
Why Did the US Stock Market Crash? $2 Trillion Wiped Out
Wall Street ended October with a brutal selloff, wiping roughly $2 trillion from the Nasdaq-100’s market value as investors questioned whether the artificial intelligence boom could justify its enormous costs. The damage was concentrated in technology stocks.
Dextape brief
Wall Street had a sharp selloff at the end of October that removed roughly $2 trillion in market value from the Nasdaq-100, as investors wondered whether heavy spending on artificial intelligence could be justified. Technology shares took the biggest hits. Intel dropped nearly 29% on Friday, Reddit fell 29%, and Alphabet lost more than $500 billion in value in a single Thursday session. The article attributes the slide partly to weak corporate earnings, with Alphabet reporting negative free cash flow of $9.1 billion as AI infrastructure outlays rose, and Amazon posting negative cash flow of $42.4 billion over twelve months while expecting roughly $220 billion of capital expenditure this year. Looking ahead, the piece points to upcoming results from AMD and Nvidia as a key test of AI demand.
Why it matters: The selloff shows how doubts about returns on AI spending can quickly reshape valuations across large technology and software companies that influence broader market sentiment.
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