Tim O’Brien

Nasdaq, Dow, S&P 500 clobbered as October closes with brutal sell-off US stocks plunged in the final trading day of the month as earnings from Amazon ($AMZN ) and solana:4ZRp2QrXjZ58XinbUzTjyhuFh8gAaHYeag4LnRUmpump ($GOOG , $GOOGL ) this week rekindled concerns about the amount of money Big Tech is spending on its AI ambitions. The Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC) tumbled 2.8% as a tech-fueled sell-off intensified. The Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI) fell 1.2%, or over 650 points, while the S&P 500 (^GSPC) dropped 2%. For the month, the Dow gained 1.5%, while the Nasdaq and S&P 500 gave up gains, falling 5.2% and 1.2%, respectively. October marked the worst month for the Nasdaq since March 2025.

Intel didn’t have a bad day. It had a 1974 kind of day. $INTC fell 28.6% on roughly 455M shares, slicing through support like it wasn’t even there. And this wasn’t just a small earnings miss. Intel says PC weakness could last through the first half of 2027, while AI-driven memory shortages are making computers more expensive. That’s the weird part—AI is helping Intel’s server business while quietly choking its core PC market. One stock blowing up doesn’t mean the whole market is breaking. But if $SOXX and $QQQ can’t catch a real bounce after this… yeah, this could be the start of something bigger.

$GOOGL just erased roughly $480B in market value—the second-largest one-day wipeout ever for a U.S. company. Google didn’t lose $480B in cash. The market repriced it after $51B of quarterly capex and another quarter of negative FCF. AI growth is real. So is the bill.

$QQQ has spent six months turning conviction into chop. That doesn’t mean a breakout is “overdue.” The trade gets cleaner after a daily close outside the box. Above it: the uptrend resumes. Below it: the 2026 anchored VWAP becomes the next test.

AI demand is so tight that even old GPUs are getting more expensive to rent. Since January: H200 +160% B200 +120% RTX Pro 6000 +65% H100 +35% Even the six-year-old A100 is up about 7%. This isn’t just a chip shortage. It’s a shortage of usable, powered compute.

AI’s next bottleneck may not be chips. It may be credit. JPMorgan estimates $279B of AI-related issuance in 2026, with another $220B–$300B possible next year. Bond buyers are already getting pickier. The buildout only works if lenders keep believing the cash flows will arrive.

Google didn’t report a brutal quarter. It reported a brutally expensive one. Revenue +25%. Search +12%. Cloud +103%. But Q3 capex hit $51.4B, FCF fell to -$9.1B and long-term debt reached $125.1B. One correction: there was no $300B+ capex guide for 2027.

That last bar is hard to miss. This $GOOGL chart shows years of cash generation followed by a sharp turn below zero. Investors might tolerate a few ugly quarters to fund AI. How long they’ll wait for that spending to pay off is another matter.

Another sea of red in Chinese stocks. The Macro Paper puts the four-month market-cap loss near $3 trillion. A huge number, though the post doesn’t specify which markets it includes. “Cheap” gets a lot harder to buy when every bounce keeps getting sold.

Azure grew 48% and $MSFT still gave back the entire earnings rally. Tough crowd. It was up over 4% premarket, then turned red Thursday. What exactly were buyers hoping to see? Anyone picking some up here, or waiting for the selling to settle?

One green candle doesn’t settle the Bitcoin bull case. A reclaim of the 50-day EMA gets interesting when buyers defend it on a retest. What would make you trust the move: a second daily close above it or a retest backed by stronger spot volume?