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<\/a><\/p>\nPublished On 23 Oct 202623 Oct 2026<\/p>\n
US tech stocks have dropped sharply amid market jitters over the sustainability of companies\u2019 enormous capital investments in AI.<\/p>\n
The Nasdaq Composite, which is dominated by tech firms linked to the AI boom, fell 2.6 percent on Thursday, its steepest fall since the index tumbled 4.2 percent on June 5.<\/p>\n
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The broader S&P 500 slid 1.2 percent, the benchmark\u2019s biggest drop since a 1.5 percent decline on July 29.<\/p>\n
Apart from Apple, each\u00a0of\u00a0the\u00a0\u201cMagnificent\u00a07\u201d, which make up more than one-third of the overall market,\u00a0saw substantial losses.<\/p>\n
Meta dropped nearly 7 percent after it raised its projected capital spending for this year to $135bn to $145bn in its latest earnings report, even as the Facebook parent company\u2019s net profit fell short of expectations.<\/p>\n
Amazon fell 4.6 percent, while Nvidia dropped 4.4 percent.<\/p>\n
Tesla and Alphabet both fell 3.1 percent, while Microsoft declined 2.2 percent.<\/p>\n
Apple rose 1.2 percent.<\/p>\n
The sell-off extended to other major tech players, including Intel and Advanced Micro Devices, both of which fell about 8 percent, and Broadcom, which slid 4.3 percent.<\/p>\n
After the losses, the Nasdaq is about 5.8 percent off its all-time high, reached on October 6.<\/p>\n
Rising oil prices since February, due to the fallout of the US-Israel war on Iran, added to the downbeat mood.<\/p>\n
Brent crude futures rose 4 percent on Thursday and continued to climb on Friday morning, taking the international benchmark above $114.20 a barrel, its highest since May.<\/p>\n
Stocks slip in Asian trading<\/p>\n
Major stock markets in Asia had a choppy session on Friday.<\/p>\n
Japan\u2019s benchmark Nikkei 225 fell more than 2 percent in morning trading before recouping some losses to close 0.3 percent lower.<\/p>\n
South Korea\u2019s KOSPI dropped as much as 3.5 percent before finishing up 0.3 percent.<\/p>\n
The Hang Seng Index in Hong Kong gained 0.7 percent after earlier dropping about 0.5 percent.<\/p>\n
Jay Goldberg, a senior analyst at Seaport Research Partners in San Francisco, said the swings in the market appeared to be driven more by sentiment than underlying fundamentals.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn short, nothing has changed. Investors have just decided to be afraid this week. Everyone I speak to points to a different cause for the downfall \u2026 It\u2019s just a giant wall of worry,\u201d Goldberg told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are legitimate concerns about the AI trade, but this level of shift in the markets is driven much more by investor sentiment than any tangible reason.\u201d<\/p>\n
US tech companies\u2019 huge investments in AI have stoked intense debate about whether a market bubble is forming similar to the one that preceded the 2000 dot-com crash.<\/p>\n
While some Wall Street analysts view current levels of investment in datacentres and graphics processing units as unsustainable, others argue that AI will revolutionise society to a degree that justifies the eye-watering sums involved.<\/p>\n
Global AI investment is forecast to reach\u00a0$2.7 trillion in 2026 and $3.6 trillion in 2027, according to technology insights company Gartner.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tech-heavy Nasdaq falls 2.6 percent as debate rages over whether AI is a bubble. Published On 23 Oct…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":811275,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[84,2411,1294,5297,59,50,86,56,54,158,55,3544],"class_list":["post-811274","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-business-and-economy","tag-economy","tag-financial-markets","tag-gb","tag-news","tag-technology","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-united-states","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-us-canada"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/811274","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=811274"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/811274\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/811275"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=811274"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=811274"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=811274"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}