Stocks tumble for a third day, pushing the S&P 500 into the red for 2026 as investors exit tech, bitcoin: Live updates

U.S. equities fell for one other day on Thursday as investors took a risk-off stance, main common trades in know-how and bitcoin to unravel.

The Dow Jones Industrial Common shed 481 factors, or 1%. The S&P 500 misplaced 1%, touchdown in unfavorable territory for the yr, whereas the Nasdaq Composite declined 1.2%. The 30-stock Dow was down almost 700 factors, or about 1.4%, at session lows, whereas the broad market S&P 500 and Nasdaq dropped 1.5% and 1.9%, respectively.

Alphabet was the newest of the “Magnificent Seven” corporations to report earnings outcomes. The corporate projected a sharp enhance in synthetic intelligence spending that spooked some investors, calling for 2026 capital expenditures of as much as $185 billion. Shares have been final down 1%. Nonetheless, shares of Broadcom jumped 2% following information of Alphabet’s spending plans, providing some hope for the synthetic intelligence commerce as the market deciphers its winners and losers.

“The truth that a few of these corporations do launch and so they announce simply extra capex spending — and it’s astronomical at this level — we’re truly viewing that as a optimistic signal for the market’s well being usually, as a result of … it is extra that the market is discerning at this level relatively than simply irrational exuberance,” stated Stephen Tuckwood, director of investments at Fashionable Wealth Administration.

Alongside Alphabet, Qualcomm got here beneath stress, sliding 7% after posting a weaker-than-expected forecast due to a world reminiscence scarcity.

Elsewhere, the sell-off in the cryptocurrency market continued to achieve steam, as bitcoin fell beneath $67,000 after earlier sinking beneath $70,000 — which is taken into account a key assist stage. In the valuable metals area, stress on silver resumed. The steel’s costs snapped a two-day rebound and dropped as a lot as 16%. It had plummeted almost 30% final Friday.

Dangerous information for the labor market

Including to the downbeat sentiment, considerations surrounding labor market weak point grew after outplacement agency Challenger, Grey & Christmas reported that U.S. employers introduced 108,435 layoffs in January, marking the highest January whole since the world monetary disaster.

On high of that, preliminary jobless claims for the week ended Jan. 31 rose greater than anticipated, and job openings in December fell to their lowest stage since September 2020.

This comes forward of subsequent week’s launch of the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ January jobs report, which was pushed again as a results of the partial authorities shutdown that ended Tuesday.

“It looks like we’re shifting out of this no-hire, no-fire interval that we have been in for the previous a number of months,” Tuckwood stated, including that the upcoming BLS jobs report “might probably affirm what we’re seeing right here with the others, the place the firing and layoffs items is beginning to flip unfavorable.”

If that seems to be the case, he believes that the Federal Reserve will ship an rate of interest lower at the finish of no less than one in all its March or April conferences.

Wall Avenue is coming off a turbulent buying and selling session, which noticed a sell-off software program and chip shares that drove the S&P 500 to a second straight day of losses. These shares have been pummeled as fears of AI disruption in the trade had investors rotating out of tech en masse and into different extra attractively valued components of the market.

The sell-off on software program shares, which entered a bear market final week, may very well be getting forward of itself, Tuckwood instructed CNBC. He stated, “We’re not fairly there but when it comes to desirous to keep away from catching a falling knife, however sooner or later for that individual subsector, there’s going to be a chance as soon as issues do get a bit too overdone there on the promote facet.”