"FOMO Is Turning Into a Fear of Overinvesting": Nasdaq Lost More Than 2% Over the Week

All three major U.S. stock indices ended the week in negative territory. Amid ongoing concerns about big tech companies’ massive spending on AI, market participants continued to sell off shares of chipmakers on Friday, Bloomberg notes. As a result, the Nasdaq Composite technology index lost more than 2% over the last five trading sessions.

CNBC notes that the escalation of the conflict in the Middle East is also putting pressure on the markets. In an interview with Axios, U.S. President Donald Trump said he was considering a “large-scale attack” against Iran, but a few hours later, at an event in the Oval Office, he noted that Tehran is allegedly taking the agreement with the U.S. more seriously and that “discussions [with the Iranian side] are ongoing” (quoted by MarketWatch).

Against this backdrop, the S&P 500, a broad U.S. stock index, moved out of negative territory in the final minutes of trading and closed the day up a symbolic 0.05%. Over the past five days, the index has lost 0.6%.

The Dow Jones Blue Chip Index rose 0.46% on July 24; for the week, it was also down slightly, by 0.38%.

The technology-heavy Nasdaq Composite was the only one of the three major U.S. stock indices to close in negative territory on July 24: amid an ongoing sell-off in chipmaker stocks, it lost 0.64% on the day and 2.13% since the start of the week.

The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index fell 4% on Friday. Shares of Micron and Marvell Technology each lost 7%, SanDisk fell 10%, and Intel shares, despite strong second-quarter results released on Thursday, dropped nearly 8% on Friday.

Tesla shares fell 18% over the week, closing at $313.03 per share on Friday—marking their worst weekly decline since 2022, according to CNBC—on Wednesday, the automaker released its second-quarter earnings report, which showed adjusted earnings well below Wall Street expectations. The company also reported a 142% year-over-year increase in capital expenditures for the second quarter. “We need to allocate funds to capital investments as quickly as we possibly can,” Tesla CEO Elon Musk saidduring a conference call.

Rising capital expenditures also spooked Alphabet investors this week. On July 22, the company released its quarterly results, announcing an increase in its capital expenditure plans for 2026 from $190 billion to $195 billion–$205 billion. As a result, the company’s stock has lost 7.8% over the past five days. On Friday, they managed to move into positive territory, gaining a modest 0.24%.

Brent crude, which had surged above $100 per barrel during the week—for the first time since Ma—fell 3.8% on July 24 to $96.77 per barrel. Reuters, citing sources, reported that Pakistan—one of the key mediators in the negotiations between the U.S. and Iran—has, at China’s initiative, resumed discussions on restarting dialogue toward a peace deal between the parties.

“The fear of missing out (FOMO) [in the market] is starting to look more and more like the fear of overinvesting,” noted Peter Andersen, CEO of Andersen Capital Management (as quoted by Reuters). In recent years, he added, investors have been actively pouring money into tech companies, hoping for growth driven by artificial intelligence. But now, market participants are concerned about the need for ever-increasing capital investments in AI by big tech companies. “People are thinking: How are we supposed to make sense of all these expenses, and how much more patience do we need to show before we see these [billion-dollar capital expenditures] actually turn into profits?” Andersen added.

This article is being updated

This article was AI-translated and verified by a human editor