NASDAQ slips 2.6% as AI spending worries, rising oil prices spook investors; Meta falls 7%

US markets slumped on Thursday, October 22, due to rising oil prices and concern regarding artificial intelligence spending.

Tech-heavy NASDAQ index slid 2.6% to settle at 26,008, while the S&P 500 declined 1.21% to 7,663.43. The Dow Jones Industrial Average ended flat with a positive bias at 52,867.98, up 0.02%.

Meta Platforms Inc slipped 6.98% to $648.85 per share despite reporting 26% year-on-year growth in revenue to $64.60 billion in the third quarter ended September 2026, compared to $51.24 billion in the year-ago period. Earnings per share stood at $3.83 vs $1.05 a year back.

"We hit major milestones this quarter toward delivering personal superintelligence for everyone - including launching Muse and Muse Wonder, our first frontier model. Our investments are paying off, the core business is strong, and we're seeing velocity across the board," said Mark Zuckerberg, Meta founder and CEO.

The company expects its fourth-quarter revenue to be in the range of $73-76 billion.

Technology stocks were under pressure due to AI spending worries. Nvidia, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) and Micron Technology fell 4.40%, 8.10% and 6.26%, respectively.

SpaceX descended 9.13%, while Marvel Technology was down 8.6%. The stocks of SanDisk Corporation and Applied Materials declined 8.51% and 8.15%, respectively.

Moderna, Lam Research Corporation, Lumentum Holdings, GE Verona, Alphabet Class A, Amazon.com Inc, Microsoft Corporation, Caterpillar, Boeing, and Flex, among others, were also among the major laggards.

Shares of Cloud Weave, which provides AI cloud services, also called neocloud, dropped 10% after Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said that demand for neoclouds is "off the charts" but noted that capital is scarce.