Wall Street gave back the previous day’s gains on Thursday, as a round of big-tech earnings that would once have cheered investors instead deepened doubts about how much money artificial intelligence is consuming — and how soon it might pay off.
By late morning in New York, the S&P 500 was down about 1.3% at 7,658, the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite had fallen more than 2% to 26,121, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average was slightly lower at 52,736. The selling was broad but led by the companies that have carried the market all year.
Meta Platforms was among the biggest drags despite beating earnings expectations. Investors focused less on the numbers than on the company’s plans to keep pouring money into AI infrastructure. Unlike Microsoft, Amazon or Google, Meta does not rent computing capacity to outside customers, which makes the return on its enormous capital spending harder to demonstrate. Meta’s results, which included revenue up 26% to $64.6 billion alongside a roughly $9.9 billion legal charge, still left the stock lower.
Tesla also slipped after its third-quarter results, with sentiment dented by profit concerns and a decision to trim its full-year capital expenditure target to around $20 billion. Traders who price Tesla as an AI and robotics company read the cut as a sign of cooling ambition. Chip stocks fared worse: Lam Research dropped sharply after a quarterly outlook that disappointed the market, pulling rivals such as Applied Materials and KLA lower, while Nvidia and memory maker Micron also declined. A downgrade of cloud firm CoreWeave added to the pressure on AI-linked names.
There were exceptions. Spotify jumped more than 9% after reporting improved margins, and chemicals group Dow Inc edged higher after results beat expectations. Defensive sectors such as consumer staples and utilities were the day’s relative winners.
The second force pushing markets down came from energy. Brent crude rose more than 2% to trade above $111 a barrel, its highest level since May, while US benchmark WTI hovered near $100, after attacks on infrastructure in Saudi Arabia heightened fears over supply. Washington has ordered non-essential diplomatic staff and their families to leave the kingdom, and investors are pricing in the risk of a wider escalation around the Strait of Hormuz. Saudi Aramco is reported to be seeking access to overseas storage facilities to protect its ability to deliver crude if local operations are disrupted.
The combination unsettled markets worldwide. In Asia, Japan’s Nikkei 225 fell 2.7% and South Korea’s Kospi dropped 3.5%, while Hong Kong’s Hang Seng lost 3.1%. European shares were also firmly lower, with Germany’s DAX down 1.2% and France’s CAC 40 off 1.6%. Gold, usually a refuge on days like this, fell about 2% to near $4,054 an ounce; instead, money moved into government bonds, pushing the 10-year US Treasury yield down toward 5.04%, and into the Japanese yen and Swiss franc. Bitcoin slid roughly 3% to below $82,000.
The one reassuring data point came from the labour market, where weekly jobless claims fell to a three-month low — a sign that, for now, the real economy is holding up better than the stock market’s mood. Attention now turns to next week, when Alphabet, Microsoft and Amazon report results that will be read as a verdict on whether the AI spending boom still has the market’s confidence.
Sources:
The Motley Fool — https://www.fool.com/coverage/stock-market-today/2026/10/22/stock-market-midday-oct-22-tech-weakness-drags-nasdaq-lower-as-ai-spending-concerns-mount/
XTB Market Wrap — https://www.xtb.com/int/market-analysis/news-and-research/market-wrap-decent-results-are-not-enough-tech-stocks-fall-further-oil-highest-since-may-22-10-2026