Stocks Stay Lower at Midday as Intel’s Plunge Offsets Amazon’s Recovery

United States stocks stayed lower late Friday morning as selling in technology shares continued and investors moved toward defensive parts of the market such as consumer staples and health care.

Yahoo Finance snapshots around 11:20 a.m. ET showed the Nasdaq Composite down 606.55 points, or 2.32 percent, at 25,578.17. The S&P 500 was down 112.31 points, or 1.45 percent, at 7,608.08, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 328.96 points, or 0.63 percent, at 52,013.60. Those were intraday readings, before the close.

All three indexes fell on Thursday. The Dow lost 132.54 points, or 0.25 percent, to close at 52,342.56. The S&P 500 fell 0.30 percent to 7,720.39, and the Nasdaq fell 365.13 points, or 1.38 percent, to 26,184.72. Alphabet dropped 12.64 percent that day, and the reassessment of artificial intelligence spending spread across large technology shares.

Intel led Friday’s decline. The stock traded at $66.26, down 28.03 percent, around 11:20 a.m. ET. The company forecast fourth-quarter revenue of $15 billion to $16 billion and adjusted earnings of $0.25 a share, well below expectations of about $17 billion in revenue and $0.44 a share. Intel pointed to weak personal computer sales and higher prices for memory chips. Reuters reported that a two-week shutdown at Intel’s Kiryat Gat plant reduced the fourth-quarter outlook by about $300 million.

Amazon moved the other way. The stock fell more than 7 percent before the open but recovered most of the loss during the morning, trading down 1.03 percent at $241.27 around 11:20 a.m. ET. An early-afternoon quote put it at $238.71, down 2.08 percent. Amazon reported third-quarter sales of $201.9 billion and diluted earnings of $1.89 a share after Thursday’s close. Earnings missed an estimate of about $1.97 a share, while Amazon Web Services revenue grew 39.3 percent to $46.0 billion. Free cash flow was a $42.4 billion outflow over the trailing 12 months, and the company kept its 2026 cash capital-spending estimate near $220 billion.

Semiconductor shares were broadly weak. In morning snapshots, Advanced Micro Devices fell 9.42 percent to $513.06, Nvidia dropped 3.43 percent to $206.34, and Broadcom lost 5.30 percent to $326.71. Micron Technology fell 5.4 percent.

Money leaving technology found other destinations. The Russell 2000 index of small-cap stocks rose 1.01 percent at the open. Shortly after 11 a.m. ET, only 226 members of the S&P 500 were advancing, most of them outside the technology sector. Regeneron rose more than 11 percent and Veralto gained more than 8 percent.

Among individual names, Reddit fell about 25 percent after its user numbers and revenue outlook disappointed, and Roblox lost about 16 percent after daily active users fell 9 percent from a year earlier to 138 million.

Bitcoin traded near $77,310, down about 5.4 percent, at 11:34 a.m. ET, still under pressure after the Binance hack. Oil rose as attacks by Yemen’s Houthis on Saudi Arabia raised supply concerns, with Brent crude at $112 a barrel and West Texas Intermediate at $103, and energy shares advanced. The third-quarter Employment Cost Index, released at 8:30 a.m., rose 0.8 percent from the prior quarter, in line with expectations, and was not the direct driver of the day’s decline.

CNBC reported before the close that the Nasdaq was heading for an October decline of nearly 5 percent, compared with roughly 0.6 percent for the S&P 500, while the Dow remained on course for a gain above 2 percent. Final figures for the last trading day of October will be set at the 4 p.m. ET close.