Stock Market Today: Nasdaq, S&P 500 and Dow Futures Sink as AI Capex Shock and Bitcoin’s Drop Below $70K Rattle Markets

Stock Market Today – AI shock, futures slide and hard numbers across Nasdaq, S&P 500 and Dow

Index futures and benchmarks – tech-heavy gauges take the hit while value holds up

U.S. futures are red almost everywhere. E-mini S&P 500 (ES=F) trades around 6,857, down 49.25 points, roughly -0.71%. Nasdaq 100 futures (NQ=F) sit near 24,772, off about 227 points, roughly -0.91%. Dow Jones Industrial Average futures (YM=F) hold up better at about 49,415, down 174 points, or -0.35%.
In cash terms, the last session ended with the S&P 500 down about 0.5%, the Nasdaq Composite off 1.5%, while the Dow gained roughly 0.5%. The equal-weighted S&P 500 actually added around 0.9%. That’s a clean factor rotation: high-multiple tech and software leading the sell-off, value and old-economy names in the Dow and equal-weight indices absorbing money.
Globally, the Stoxx 600 is around 610.5, down roughly 1.2%. Shanghai trades near 4,076, off about 0.6%. The VIX is around 21.1, up more than 13% on the day, signalling a clear volatility regime shift, not just noise.

Alphabet – $114 billion quarter and a $175–$185 billion AI capex bombshell

Alphabet put up very strong Q4 numbers on the surface. Revenue came in just under $114 billion, up about 18% year over year, driven by digital ads and cloud. Net income printed around $34.5 billion, up roughly 30%.
The problem is the new AI build-out. Management guided 2026 capital expenditures to a massive $175–$185 billion, roughly double 2025 and far above what was in current models. That is a mega-cycle in data centres, networking and custom AI hardware that will drag on free cash flow in the near term.
The stock closed a little above $333 and is trading premarket just under $323–$325, down roughly 4%–6%. At this price you’re paying a premium tech multiple for a business suddenly committing to industrial-scale capex. The market is now demanding hard revenue and margin math behind every AI dollar, not just a story.

Semiconductors – Qualcomm squeezed by memory, Broadcom levered to hyperscale spend

Qualcomm delivered fiscal Q1 revenue of about $12.3 billion, up 5% year over year, with EPS at $2.78 versus roughly $2.75 expected. That beat doesn’t matter; guidance does. For Q2, management sees revenue between $10.2 billion and $11.0 billion, with the midpoint below the $11.0 billion the Street wanted, and EPS in the $2.45–$2.65 range versus expectations near $2.87.
The culprit is an industry-wide memory crunch. AI data-centre builds are absorbing DRAM and NAND at scale, pushing up prices and crowding out smartphone makers. That squeezes Qualcomm’s customers, caps volumes and compresses margins. The stock sat around $148.9 at the close and is indicated near $133.8 in premarket, down roughly 10%–11% in one shot.
On the other side, Broadcom is a direct beneficiary of Alphabet’s massive AI budget. With AVGO partnering on Google’s custom tensor and networking silicon, a $175–$185 billion capex plan is effectively a multi-year revenue pipeline. The stock closed near $308, then traded premarket around $314, up roughly 1.9%–2% while most of tech is red.
Layer on the 17% one-day collapse in Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) and the earlier hits across AI-linked names, and the message is simple: anything tied to legacy compute or challenged software models is being repriced lower; infrastructure plays plugged into hyperscale AI capex still get a bid, but entry price is critical after the multi-year run.

Mega-cap tech focus – Amazon, Nvidia, Tesla under the microscope

Amazon trades lower into earnings, with the stock off roughly 2.3% and sitting in the $230s as the market waits for AWS numbers. The bar is high: investors want close to 21% year-on-year growth in AWS revenue and clear evidence that AI workloads are monetising, not just inflating costs. Any miss on that combination keeps pressure on the NASDAQ-heavy indices.
Nvidia (NVDA) and Tesla (TSLA) both took 3%–4% hits in the last session, participating fully in the AI-reset sell-off. When the Nasdaq Composite just logged its worst two-day drop since last April’s tariff turmoil while the Dow flirts with record highs, you’re looking at a very deliberate move out of “Magnificent Seven” crowding and into more diversified cash-flow streams.

Consumer, fitness and beauty – Peloton’s miss, Estée Lauder’s tariff problem, e.l.f.’s outperformance

Peloton Interactive reported fiscal Q2 revenue of $656.5 million, down 3% year on year and roughly $20.7 million below the $677.2 million analysts expected. The loss widened to $0.09 per share versus a forecast $0.06 loss.
Guidance is weak: current-quarter revenue is projected at $605–$625 million versus a $637 million consensus, and full-year revenue at $2.40–$2.44 billion versus roughly $2.48 billion expected. The stock trades around $5.24 after hours, down about 11%. At this price the market is effectively saying the growth story is broken unless Peloton can prove that the new AI-branded Cross Training Series and higher subscription prices will actually move the needle.
In prestige cosmetics, The Estée Lauder Companies posted Q2 EPS of $0.89, beating the $0.83 consensus, on revenue of $4.23 billion, up 6% and in line with forecasts. Full-year EPS guidance was raised to $2.05–$2.25 compared to a $2.16 consensus. On the numbers alone this is fine.
The drag is tariffs. Management flagged roughly $100 million of fiscal 2026 profit headwind from trade barriers, including a 39% tariff rate on Swiss imports and 35% on Canadian imports into the U.S. Shares closed near $119.6 and are indicated around $106.5 premarket, down about 11%. Tariff exposure is now a core part of the valuation discussion here.
At the opposite end of the price spectrum, e.l.f. Beauty printed EPS of $0.65 versus $0.55 expected and net sales of $489.5 million versus $461 million consensus, a 38% year-over-year surge. Full-year sales guidance jumps to $1.6–$1.61 billion from $1.55–$1.57 billion, and EPS guidance rises to $3.05–$3.10 from $2.80–$2.85.
The stock closed near $84.6 and is indicated around $89.3 premarket, up roughly 5.7%–6%. Even with tariff-related gross margin pressure, this is what the market rewards right now: strong top-line growth, share gains and upgraded guidance backed by numbers, not narrative.

Digital ads and chip IP – Snap’s advertiser growth, Arm’s licensing miss

Snap reported Q4 revenue of roughly $1.71–$1.72 billion, up about 10% year over year and just ahead of the $1.70 billion consensus. EPS came in at $0.03 profit instead of a $0.03 loss expected. Total active advertisers grew 28%, driven by Sponsored Snaps and Promoted Places. That’s a solid proof point that direct-response digital ads are still working even in a choppy macro tape.
Guidance is more cautious: Q1 revenue is guided to $1.50–$1.53 billion compared with about $1.55 billion expected. The stock closed around $5.91 and is fluctuating just under that in premarket. The Street is accepting cautious guidance as reasonable given the macro, not punishing it.
Arm Holdings delivered fiscal Q3 licensing revenue of $505 million versus $519.9 million expected, a marginal miss on the highest-margin revenue line. Overall revenue guidance for Q4 is $1.47 billion versus a $1.44 billion consensus, reflecting strong demand for AI-oriented and energy-efficient designs.
However, when the stock is priced for perfection, a $15 million licensing shortfall matters. ARM closed around $104.9 and is indicated near $98.8 in premarket, down roughly 6%. The market is signalling that mix and margin matter as much as headline growth.

Autos and EVs – Volvo punished, Nio moves toward its first profit

Volvo Cars saw its shares fall more than 20% after results sharply missed expectations. Higher U.S. tariffs, EV subsidy cuts, dollar weakness and a vicious price war in China hit margins from all directions. For a global OEM with heavy exposure to cross-border supply chains and China, that combination is toxic.
In contrast, Nio delivered a rare positive surprise. Management told investors to expect an adjusted operating profit of 200–700 million yuan for Q4, roughly $29–$100 million, marking its first-ever adjusted operating profit. That’s driven by sustained volume growth, richer product mix and aggressive cost cutting.
The stock closed around $4.44 and is indicated near $4.76 premarket, up over 7%. It’s still a high-risk name, but NIO is now transitioning from “never profitable” to “proving it can generate positive operating leverage,” which matters for any long-term thesis in Chinese EVs.

Index reshuffles – Ciena steps into the S&P 500, Arrowhead and ADT move up the ladder

Ciena will join the S&P 500, replacing Dayforce, which was taken private in a $12.3 billion deal. After the announcement, Ciena shares jumped about 4% in extended trading before easing as arbitrage flows came in. Index inclusion forces passive buying and boosts liquidity for CIEN.
Arrowhead Pharmaceuticals (ARWR) will move from the S&P SmallCap 600 into the S&P MidCap 400, while ADT replaces ARWR in the SmallCap 600. Both ARWR and ADT trade about 3%–4% higher premarket as they gain visibility and index demand.

Labour market – 108,435 layoffs and jobless claims at 231,000

Challenger, Gray & Christmas counted 108,435 announced job cuts in January. That’s up 118% from 49,795 cuts a year ago and up 205% from roughly 35,500 in December. It is the highest January layoff number since 2009. On the hiring side, intentions were just 5,306, the lowest January level since tracking began in 2009. Most of these plans were set late in 2025, so this is not noise; it’s a clear downgrade in corporate confidence entering 2026.
Weekly initial jobless claims for the week ending January 31 came in at 231,000, up 22,000 from 209,000 and above the 212,000 economists expected. Continuing claims rose to 1.84 million. Weather distortions matter, but the pattern is consistent with a labour market that is cooling from “red-hot” to “normalising,” not collapsing. Still, for equity markets, higher layoffs plus weaker hiring compress the growth narrative and raise recession odds on the margin.

Policy, inflation and tariffs – Lisa Cook and Scott Bessent frame the macro backdrop

Lisa Cook made it clear that inflation progress stalled in 2025. The PCE price index is estimated at about 2.9% year over year for December, and core PCE around 3.0%, both above the 2% target. She highlighted that core goods inflation picked back up largely due to last year’s broad tariff hikes on imported products. Her point: this is a one-time step-up in the price level rather than a new inflation trend, so disinflation could resume once these tariff effects fade.
Scott Bessent defended the administration’s tariff- and reshoring-heavy strategy in Congress. Critics pointed to thousands of manufacturing jobs lost monthly since sweeping import taxes went in, but Bessent argued that a wave of factories already breaking ground will take time to show in payroll data. Markets hear that as a signal that tariffs and industrial policy won’t ease soon, which keeps pressure on global manufacturers, metals and U.S. trading partners.

Crypto – Bitcoin breaks $70,000 and Strategy Inc trades like leveraged beta

Bitcoin (BTC-USD) has broken decisively below the $70,000 line many traders were watching as support. Spot BTC traded recently around $69,300–$69,700, down roughly 5%–8% on the day and at its lowest level since the November 5, 2024 U.S. presidential election.
The move accelerated after Bessent stated in a House Financial Services Committee hearing that the Treasury does not have authority to buy bitcoin or order banks to support cryptocurrencies. That explicitly shuts down any idea of a government backstop.
Strategy Inc, one of the largest corporate holders of bitcoin, closed near $129.1 and is indicated around $120.2 premarket, down almost 7%. At this point MSTR trades as leveraged BTC beta. A sustained break below $70,000 in the token keeps equity volatility in this name extremely high.

Gold, silver and commodities – from blow-off top to brutal correction

Gold futures (GC=F) trade around $4,854 an ounce, down roughly $96 on the session, or about -1.95%. A week ago, gold spiked near $5,625, so even after the drop it is still up roughly 15% year to date. That’s a classic blow-off and retracement: a sharp move from below $4,500 to above $5,600, then an 11% slide from the January 29 peak.
Silver futures (SI=F) are even more extreme. Contracts that briefly crossed $90 an ounce last week now trade around $74–$77, down about $9.5–$10 on the day, roughly -11% to -13%, after having fallen nearly 30% last Friday alone. In early Asia trading today, silver swung from near $90 down to under $73.50 before stabilising. A major listed proxy, the iShares Silver Trust (SLV), is indicated down about 15% premarket. Sentiment in the white metal is pure deleveraging.
Base metals feel the shock as well. Copper is down more than 1%, slipping below $13,000 a ton. Platinum is off roughly 5%. West Texas Intermediate crude trades near $63.4 a barrel, down about $1.7 or -2.6%, while the S&P GSCI commodities index sits around 585, off roughly 1.4%.
The U.S. 10-year Treasury yield is near 4.24%, down from about 4.28%, signalling a mild bid into high-quality duration. The dollar index trades around 95–98 depending on the basket, up roughly 0.05%–0.2%. In other words, in this risk-off episode, capital is favouring dollars and Treasuries over gold and crypto, which were both heavily crowded as “alternative hedges” on the way up.

FX and political risk – U.K. scandal and Trump tariffs bleed into markets

Keir Starmer faces intensifying political risk as questions mount over former ambassador Peter Mandelson’s connections to Jeffrey Epstein and the handling of his appointment as envoy to the Trump administration. The scandal has hit confidence in U.K. assets, weakening the pound and pushing U.K. yields higher as investors price in political instability risk.
Tariff policy from the Trump administration continues to distort trade, inflation and earnings. Higher import taxes on metals, autos and consumer goods are feeding directly into the pricing of companies like Volvo Cars, Estée Lauder, e.l.f., and U.S. industrials, while also helping drive the brief but violent spike in gold and silver. Markets are now treating tariff headlines as macro events, not footnotes.

Positioning view – explicit Buy / Sell / Hold calls after the AI and commodities reset

For the big U.S. indices (Nasdaq, S&P 500, Dow), the data support a Hold stance with a tilt toward quality and value. With ES=F at 6,857 (-0.71%), NQ=F at 24,772 (-0.91%) and YM=F at 49,415 (-0.35%), plus layoffs at 108,435 in January and jobless claims at 231,000, this is not yet a collapse, but the market is clearly repricing risk in crowded growth trades. Equal-weighted indices and dividend-paying cyclicals look better positioned than a concentrated bet on the “Magnificent Seven.”
For expensive AI and software names directly hit by the Alphabet capex reset and AI disruption fears, the stance is Sell / underweight in the short term. Alphabet (GOOGL) taking capex to $175–$185 billion, QCOM guiding Q2 EPS down into the $2.45–$2.65 range, AMD losing 17% in a day and software ETFs shedding nearly $1 trillion in a week are all clear signals: valuations still do not fully reflect capex risk and potential business-model cannibalisation.
For infrastructure suppliers tied directly to AI capex – AVGO, select data-centre, memory and networking names once the current supply shock clears – the stance is selective Buy on weakness, not at any price. Broadcom trading around $314 premarket after a $308 close, with Google targeting up to $185 billion in spend, is still attractive structurally, but chasing strength into every spike is not. The trade is to accumulate on pullbacks, not to pay peak multiples into panic buying.
For crypto, especially bitcoin around $69,000–$70,000 with a daily drop of 5%–8% and no realistic policy backstop, the stance is Sell / underweight. Strategy Inc (MSTR) trading down nearly 7% premarket on BTC’s move shows how much single-name equity risk is layered on top of token volatility. Any position here has to be treated as speculative, not as a defensive allocation.
For gold, with futures around $4,854 (-1.95% on the day but still up about 15% year to date) after a spike to $5,625 and an 11% drop from the January 29 peak, the stance is Hold with tight risk control. The macro case (tariffs, political risk, concern around central-bank independence) is intact, but positioning is crowded and price action is unstable. For silver, after moving from above $90 to the mid-$70s with a 16%–17% intraday collapse and a 30% crash last Friday, the stance is clear Sell / avoid until leverage and volatility normalise.
Bottom line: capital is rotating away from promise-only AI plays and leverage trades in crypto and silver, and toward real cash flow, hard assets with sane positioning, and high-quality dollar assets. The opportunity is not in trying to catch every falling knife; it is in methodically upgrading portfolio quality while this trillion-dollar tech and commodities reset plays out.

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