The S&P 500 fell 0.6% this week and the Nasdaq dropped 2.0%, with almost all of the damage coming Friday. The Dow slipped 0.9%, while the Russell 2000 rose 1.3% and nine of 11 sectors finished higher. For October, the Nasdaq lost 5.3%, its worst month since March 2025, while the Dow gained 1.7%.
The most important thing that happened this week wasn’t on the index tape. Intel, Reddit and Alphabet all beat at least part of their estimates, and they still lost a combined hundreds of billions in market value. A good quarter didn’t protect a stock this week, and an attractive price didn’t either.
What protected investors was knowing which businesses fund their growth with their own cash and which ones are borrowing to keep up. That’s the question every Monday deep dive answers for paid subscribers, and below is what it looked like across the market this week.
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1. Intel has its worst day on record and drags tech down with it. Intel actually beat Thursday night ($0.52 per share vs. $0.41 expected), and its data center and AI revenue grew 78%. But it guided fourth-quarter sales about 9% below estimates, and the stock fell 28.6% Friday, which the WSJ called its worst daily decline ever. The rest of tech followed: