The week of October 26-30 ended with a tech rout, but the index tally hides how uneven it was. Small caps rose. The Dow barely moved over the month. The Nasdaq took the damage.
How did the major indexes finish the week of October 26-30?
The S&P 500 closed Friday at 7,580.07, down 1.8% on the day and 0.6% on the week. The Dow ended at 51,770.31, down 0.9% for the week. The Nasdaq Composite closed at 25,437.00, down 2.0% on the week, and the Russell 2000 gained 1.3% to 2,811.84 despite a 1.7% Friday drop.
Friday did most of the work. The Nasdaq fell 2.9% in one session, its worst day since June.
Why did October end so badly for the Nasdaq?
The Nasdaq lost about 5.2% in October, its worst month since March 2025. The Dow, by contrast, gained about 1.5% and the S&P 500 lost about 1.2%.
That gap is the AI capex trade unwinding in the cap-weighted index while the price-weighted Dow, with fewer mega-cap tech names, held up. Same month. Opposite experience, depending on what you owned.
Which stocks drove the damage?
Alphabet fell 12.6% on Thursday, erasing roughly $500 billion in market value, and kept sliding Friday. Amazon missed revenue and earnings expectations and closed Friday at $240.35, down 1.4%, after trading much lower after hours Thursday. Its trailing 12-month free cash flow is negative $42.4 billion.
Intel was the Friday story. It fell roughly 29% after a weak outlook tied to soft PC demand and memory-chip pricing, and dragged the chip group with it.
What did the Fed and the inflation data say?
The Fed held rates on Wednesday, per its October 28 statement, with no firm commitment on the next move. Core PCE then rose to 3.1% year over year from 3.0%, a 0.3% monthly gain.
A hold with inflation re-accelerating is not a dovish setup. The 10-year Treasury yield still ended the week near 4.93%, down 6 basis points on Friday as money moved out of equities.
What did oil, gold and the rest of the tape do?
Crude settled near $104 on the December contract, up about 2% on Friday, with Brent around $113 earlier in the week. Gold fell 3.3% to roughly $3,899, so the selloff did not produce a clean haven bid.
A rising oil price, sticky core inflation and a falling equity multiple in the same week is the combination to watch, because it limits how fast any of the three can resolve.
What is on the calendar for the week of November 2?
The U.S. midterm elections are Tuesday, November 3. JOLTS job openings are due the same day at 10:00 AM ET. ISM services follows Wednesday, November 4, and the October jobs report lands Friday, November 6 at 8:30 AM ET. September payrolls came in at +29K with unemployment at 4.2%, so the bar for a surprise is low in either direction.
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