US technology shares fell hard on Friday, October 30, 2026, after results from Amazon and Intel raised fresh doubts about how much the artificial intelligence buildout is costing and when it will pay off.
The Nasdaq Composite dropped 2.86 percent to close at 25,437.00. The S&P 500 fell 1.82 percent to 7,580.07, its worst day since June. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 572 points, or about 1.1 percent, to 51,770.31.
October ended as the Nasdaq’s worst month since March 2025, down more than 5 percent. The index closed Friday around 7.8 percent below its record high of October 6, Reuters reported.
Intel’s worst day in decades
Intel took the heaviest hit, falling nearly 29 percent — its worst single day since the 1970s. The chipmaker warned it would burn cash this year, pointing to weak demand for personal computers, bottlenecks in its factories, and heavy spending to expand production.
The selling spread across the sector. Nvidia fell 4.2 percent and was the single biggest drag on the S&P 500. AMD dropped about 11 percent, Broadcom 5.5 percent and Micron 5.3 percent.
A day earlier, Alphabet shares fell more than 12 percent — its worst day on record — after the company told investors it had burned more cash over the summer than in the spring.
Amazon’s spending bill
Amazon fell after reporting a sharp cash outflow in the third quarter and signalling it would raise capital spending again next year, on top of already large outlays. The company has guided to roughly $220 billion in cash capital expenditure for 2026.
Together, Amazon and Intel were on course to lose about $300 billion in combined market value.
Jake Behan, head of capital markets at Direxion, told Reuters the market has stopped asking only how fast a company can grow, and has started asking “what you have to spend to get there.” kfgo
That is the shift. Cloud revenue is still growing well. What investors are now weighing is the bill attached to it — and several firms have been borrowing in the bond market to pay it, which looks harder to justify as borrowing costs stay high.
Not everything moved down. Outside technology, almost as many S&P 500 companies rose as fell, with many reporting stronger summer profits than analysts expected. The Dow finished October up about 1.5 percent.
Why Pakistan should watch this
This is not just a New York story.
Information technology is now Pakistan’s largest services export. IT exports hit a record $4.6 billion in fiscal year 2025-26 and reached $1.25 billion in the first quarter of 2026-27, with September alone bringing in $435 million, according to figures shared by Adviser to the Finance Minister Khurram Schehzad. Pakistani freelancers earned a record $197 million in September, and roughly three million people here work in freelancing.
A large share of that money comes from American clients. Pakistani firms and freelancers build software, run back-office work and provide design and marketing services for US companies — including many in the technology sector now under pressure.
If US tech firms start trimming budgets to protect cash, outsourced and contract work is usually among the first lines reviewed. That has not happened yet, and one bad week on Wall Street does not make it inevitable. But for an economy where IT exports are one of the few reliable sources of dollars, the direction of US tech spending is worth following as closely as the exchange rate.
The other Pakistani link was more immediate. Bitcoin fell further on Friday as the selloff ran alongside the $6.3 billion hack at Binance, the exchange most Pakistani crypto users rely on.
