These are some sudden massive movements in even huge stocks.

By Wolf Richter for WOLF STREET.

People have become so edgy that they jump off the bandwagon in large enough numbers to get off before the others, causing even huge stocks to tank by massive amounts, when there are any wrinkles in sight. A lot of that happened today.

Intel plunged by 23% afterhours today and 3.6% during the day, for a combined 25.8% cliff-dive, to $70.87. Since its high on June 22, the stock has now plunged by 50%. Other chips stocks fell in sympathy.

It reported earnings, which beat, but included terrible guidance for its PC business, and other disappointing details about its business, and lower guidance on earnings and revenues than expected.

The question for me isn’t why it fell to $70.87; the question is why the heck did it ever soar to $142 by June, from $20 a year earlier. What were people thinking? Sure, Trump hyped it, and the government bought a stake at much lower prices, and then there was the general semiconductor madness and everything went WHOOSH.

But it seems everyone knew that the spike would not last, they were just riding it up while the riding was good, while watching out for some wrinkles, and those wrinkles became sell signals. And at today’s sell signal, they knocked out over a quarter of Intel’s value in one fell swoop. That’s brutal.

Amazon shares plunged by 11% today, of which 4.2% during regular trading and another 7.3% afterhours, to $225.99, bringing the drop from the August 3 high to 21%.

Its earnings slightly disappointed top and bottom, and advertising revenues also disappointed, and capital expenditures and negative free cash flow jolted. But AWS revenues soared by 39%, and AWS operating income soared by 55%, and beat. It’s not like the company is falling apart.

CEO Andy Jassy said in the conference call that the company expects to “spend meaningfully more in 2027,” and to make that go down more smoothly, he added that Amazon has a “clear line of sight to attractive financial returns.”

But the AI spending binge and the precariously high stock prices have started to put people on edge, and they don’t want to get rolled up; they want to jump off first.

Alphabet plunged by 12.3% during regular trading and another 1.1% afterhours to $279.18, for a combined decline of 13.3%, knocking over $500 billion out of the company’s value.

Since the peak on May 13, the stock has plunged by 31%. But trillions don’t even matter anymore, there are so many of them.

It had reported earnings Wednesday evening. Revenue jumped by 25% in Q3, about as expected, earnings per share missed badly, but that was driven by its securities holdings, not operations. Capital spending rose to $51 billion in Q3, causing its free cash flow to worsen to a negative $9.1 billion. And then there was the item of revenues from search ads, which grew by only 12%, which missed expectations, and it seems even Google’s own search advertising revenues are getting eaten by AI.

People had been riding this up for as long as possible, knowing that they’d have to jump off at the first signs of bad breath ahead of all the others that would want to jump off. Everyone is super-edgy these days at these precariously high stock prices.

ServiceNow, which describes itself as “an AI-first, workflow-driven platform that unifies sales, order management, customer service, and field service on a single system,” plunged by 27% during the day, to $109.67, and is now down by 52% from the high in December 2024. But the stock had been even lower earlier this year, and is now actually up from those levels. Lots of trigger-happy folks out there.

The issue today was that it reported earnings. Revenues jumped by 20%, roughly in line with estimates, adjusted earnings were a little off. It lifted its outlook for the full year of 2026 a little, but not enough.

Fortinet, a cybersecurity and networking vendor, plunged by 20% during the day to $139.10, and is down by 29% from its high in early October. It too reported earnings today, and people pulled the trigger.

Reddit plunged a combined 21.3% today, of which 18.2% after hours and 3.7% during the day, to $106.00. Folks are little trigger-happy, aren’t they?

Since its all-time high on January 13, it has plunged by 60%.

This evening, it announced its Q3 earnings, which beat expectations. But there was the weak guidance for Q4 and the announcement of plans to require all users to create official accounts to access the platform.

And then CEO Steve Huffman told CNBC that Reddit’s already declining search-referral traffic from Google went “down meaningfully in this quarter” due to the “shift to AI mode and AI overviews.” This is something that is happening to lots of websites, including WOLF STREET. So welcome to the club where AI steals everything and hogs everything.

And then there was Anthropic. These sudden and sharp reactions in the market to the wrinkles in earnings reports occurred to the backdrop of Anthropic’s draft S-1 filing for its IPO, which triggered bullshit overload that blew a fuse and plunged the entire neighborhood into darkness.

However this will go on, we can see that people are very edgy now. Everyone is aware that this could get rough any time. People still want to ride it all the way to the top, and not miss that 20% or 100% gain, but be the first to jump off.

Enjoy reading WOLF STREET and want to support it? You can donate. I appreciate it immensely. Click on the mug to find out how: