Thursday was a bloodbath for tech, and the Magnificent Seven took the worst of it. The Nasdaq dropped 2%, the S&P 500 fell 1.6%, and the Dow shed 670 points. But the real headline was Apple, which cratered 5% in its worst single-session performance since April.
The damage was broad-based. All seven of the Mag Seven stocks closed red. AppLovin collapsed 20% after earnings disappointed. Cisco, which we covered yesterday after its “beat-and-drop” earnings report, got hammered another 12%. Restaurant Brands (Burger King’s parent) fell 6%. The S&P 500 tech sector was the day’s worst performer, down 2.7%.
Apple’s sell-off was a perfect storm of bad headlines. Reports emerged that its AI initiatives — specifically Apple Intelligence features — could face further delays, while the company’s News app drew regulatory scrutiny from the feds. For a stock that’s been trading on AI optimism without much to show for it, that’s a dangerous combination. When the narrative cracks, momentum stocks fall fast.
Not everything got torched. Memory and storage stocks had a monster day — Seagate surged 6%, SanDisk jumped 5%, and Western Digital gained 4%. McDonald’s rose 2.7% after solid results, and Anheuser-Busch InBev climbed 3.7%. The market was clearly rotating out of high-multiple growth and into value names with actual earnings momentum.
On the macro side, existing home sales dropped to 3.91 million in January — well below the expected 4.15 million and a sharp decline from December’s 4.35 million. Jobless claims came in slightly above expectations at 227,000. And the 10-year Treasury yield slipped below 4.11%, which would normally support growth stocks but wasn’t enough to stem the bleeding.
Commodities got slammed too. Gold fell 3% to $4,950 an ounce. Silver collapsed 10% to $75.25. WTI crude dropped 2.7% to below $63. Bitcoin slid from a daily high of $68,400 to around $65,500. When everything sells off together, it’s usually not about fundamentals — it’s about positioning and fear.
Today’s CPI report will set the tone for what comes next. If inflation runs hot, rate cut expectations get pushed back further, and yesterday’s selloff could have legs. If it comes in cool, this may end up looking like a one-day shakeout. Either way, Thursday was a reminder that betting on narrative without earnings to back it up is a dangerous game.