More than $2 trillion in market value is set to be wiped from the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 this month, as Big Tech earnings intensified investor scrutiny of whether the billions being poured into artificial intelligence can generate returns quickly enough.
The wipeout would amount to slightly more than SpaceX’s entire market value. The index has fallen over 5.8% so far in October as the AI trade ran into turbulence, with hyperscalers Meta Platforms, Alphabet and Amazon.com raising spending forecasts further as they race to expand AI infrastructure.
The prospect of ever-bigger AI outlays has unnerved investors, particularly as rising borrowing costs threaten to make debt-funded investment more expensive and harder to justify.
Here's a roundup of megacap earnings so far, with Apple set to report next week and AI bellwether Nvidia due mid-November.
Alphabet suffered its biggest one-day percentage drop on record on Thursday after disappointing results in the core business of search advertising and a massive acceleration in cash burn.