Memorandum
- From
- Connor Quincy via Fast Company
- Date
- Filed
- Business·3 min to read
- Re
Tech stocks and crypto slide as Nasdaq posts worst day since June
ReTech stocks and crypto slide as Nasdaq posts worst day since June
Weak earnings outlooks from major AI companies and a major hack at crypto exchange Binance drove a sharp selloff in technology shares and digital assets on Friday, with Intel shares falling about 30 percent.
Technology stocks and cryptocurrencies sold off sharply on Friday as investors pulled back from high-growth assets, pushing the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite down 3.3 percent, its worst day since June. The slide came as traders headed into the Halloween weekend, and it reflected a combination of disappointing corporate results and a major security breach in the crypto market.
Intel Corporation led the decline, with its shares down roughly 30 percent after the chipmaker reported a weaker-than-expected outlook for its fourth quarter. According to CNBC, the drop was the company's worst single day in more than 50 years. The move was a striking reversal for a company that has long been a fixture of the technology sector, and it instantly reshaped expectations for the chipmaker's near-term performance.
Pressure spread well beyond Intel. Memory chip and semiconductor companies, including Nvidia Corporation and Micron Technology, also took a hit as investors reassessed the outlook for the broader chip sector. Sandisk Corporation shares fell more than 14 percent on Friday and have dropped more than 35 percent over the past month, a sustained decline that suggests the weakness was not limited to a single session.
Weak earnings reports from artificial intelligence heavyweights, including Amazon and Google, added to investor unease. Those results, coupled with a historic hack on the cryptocurrency exchange Binance, left traders of high-growth assets feeling they had few places to turn. Because AI-focused companies and speculative digital assets have often been held by the same growth-oriented investors, the two shocks landed on the same portfolios at once, amplifying the selling.
The Binance breach carried particular weight in the crypto market, where confidence in exchanges is central to trading activity. Digital assets had already been volatile, and the hack added a fresh source of uncertainty about the security of major platforms. Cryptocurrencies moved lower alongside technology shares, reflecting the way the two markets have increasingly traded in tandem.
The session marked the steepest decline for the Nasdaq since June and pointed to a broader shift in investor sentiment heading into the final months of the year. Markets had been sensitive to signs that the enthusiasm around artificial intelligence might not translate into the profits investors expected, and the Intel warning sharpened that concern. The story is still developing, and further details on the Binance breach and the outlook for the affected companies had not been fully confirmed at the time of reporting.
2
