Stock market today: Dow, S&P 500, Nasdaq sink as sell-off builds while silver, bitcoin plu

February 5, 2026

LIVE Updated 42 mins ago

Rian Howlett , Karen Friar and Laura Bratton

Updated 2 min read

US stocks turned lower on Thursday in a fruitless search for a reprieve from a building tech sell-off as investors awaited Amazon earnings, assessed Alphabet’s big AI spending plans, and digested jobs data that signaled fresh weakness in the labor market.

The S&P 500 (^GSPC) moved roughly 1.2% lower, while the Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC) shed 1.5%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI) lost over 1%, or more than 500 points.

The market is in the midst of a trillion-dollar tech wipeout, as investors weigh whether some software stocks took too big a beating. The losses have been spurred by worries about AI disruption to established software players — a risk that had been overlooked by investors focused on the fallout from massive AI spending until recently.

Wall Street is still digesting the latest batch of corporate earnings, with Big Tech’s AI buildout and demand in high focus. Alphabet (GOOG) shares slid over 5% after the Google parent outlined a significant ramp-up in AI investment — to as high as $185 billion — in its quarterly results late Wednesday.

The countdown is now on to Amazon’s (AMZN) report, set for release after Thursday’s market close. Eyes are on the all-important AWS cloud unit, expected to deliver a 21% jump in sales.

Meanwhile, the labor market flashed fresh signals of weakness: Weekly jobless claims rose more than expected and job openings sank to their lowest level since 2020, while a new report found that last month marked the worst January for layoff announcements since 2009. The government’s monthly jobs report is due next Wednesday.

Elsewhere, silver (SI=F) plunged as much as 17%, erasing all of its two-day recovery as Chinese buyers dumped holdings. Wall Street is debating whether the recent record rally in silver and gold (GC=F) ran too high, too fast — and if a further slump awaits.

Bitcoin (BTC-USD) also plunged after Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent ruled out a bailout for the digital currency — another disappointment for crypto markets hopeful for a boost from the Trump administration. The token broke below the key $70,000 level — last seen hovering just above $67,000 — amid a crisis of confidence.

LIVE 23 updates

It hasn’t been a great day for jobs data, with the delayed JOLTS report serving as the final piece in a trifecta of negative news about layoffs, hiring, and unemployment claims.

Yahoo Finance’s Emma Ockerman reports:

Read the full story here.
Bitcoin (BTC-USD) tumbled to hover near $67,500 on Thursday, hitting its lowest level since before the 2024 presidential election and erasing all gains made during President Trump’s second term.

For token holders, the pain may not be over.

“Bitcoin remains in a larger bear-market structure,” read a 10X Research note on Thursday. “In the absence of a strong catalyst and with positioning still stretched, downside risks remain elevated.”

Notably, the firm points to a significant overhang — overexposed bitcoin ETF holders who are underwater, with an estimated average acquisition price near $90,000.

A similar dynamic is playing out with ethereum (ETH) ETFs, as investors are down approximately 31% given their average cost basis, according to 10X Research data.

“Under these conditions, attracting incremental allocations from Wall Street investors becomes increasingly difficult, particularly when many existing holders likely regret not reducing exposure at significantly higher levels,” the note said.

Absent a significant catalyst, the firm doesn’t see a bottom to crypto’s bear market until possibly the summer.

“As we have previously outlined, a cycle low around the FIFA World Cup this summer could mark a more compelling long-term buying opportunity,” 10X Research analysts said.
Peloton (PTON) shares fell more than 20% after the company reported its fiscal second quarter earnings and announced its CFO will be exiting.

The Wall Street Journal reports:

Read more here.
Hims & Hers (HIMS) shares soared as much as 9% as the company said it will begin selling compounded copies of Novo Nordisk’s (NVO) Wegovy pill. The pill from Hims & Hers would cost about $100 less than Novo’s, Reuters reported.

Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly (LLY) both saw shares tumble about 7% on the news.

Read more here.
Software stocks have been hammered in the past few days, accelerating a months-long decline as investors become more fearful of disruption risks posed by new artificial intelligence tools — particularly those from Anthropic.

Alphabet (GOOGL) CEO Sundar Pichai was asked about the market belief that software stocks are losing ground during a call with analysts following the Google parent’s earnings report Wednesday afternoon.

The CEO said: “Look, at least from my vantage point, I definitely see we have very, very good SaaS (software as a service) customers who are leaders in their respective categories.”

Those customers include Intuit (INTU), ServiceNow (NOW), and Salesforce (CRM), per Bloomberg data.

Pichai continued: “And what I see the successful companies doing is they are definitely incorporating Gemini deeply in critical workflows, be it on improving their product experience and driving growth or using it to drive efficiency within their organizations.”

“[J]ust like it has been an enabling tool for us across our products and services.. I think the [software] companies who are seizing the moment, I think, have the same opportunity ahead.”

His comments echo those of Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang this week.

Read more about what’s driving fears over AI eating into the competitive moats of SaaS leaders here.
The performance of Amazon’s (AMZN) cloud business, AWS, will be keenly examined when its earnings report lands later, after Microsoft (MSFT) stock plunged last week, in part due to a slowdown in cloud growth.

Bloomberg reports:

This was not an issue for Amazon’s October earnings, as its shares jumped almost 10% following better than expected revenue from Amazon Web Services, also known as AWS. Now, however, fear is rippling through the tech sector, and Amazon investors are increasingly concerned that the slowdown at Microsoft’s Azure indicates broader weakness for cloud providers.

“It isn’t clear how much of Microsoft’s disappointment might be due to company-specific issues and how much might reflect an overall slowing in the cloud space,” said David Miller, chief investment officer at Catalyst Funds, which holds Amazon shares in several portfolios. “If it’s the latter, that could carry over.”

… Amazon’s results come against a backdrop of anti-software sentiment that’s weighing on the entire tech sector as investors try to sort the winners and losers from the hundreds of billions of dollars being spent to develop artificial intelligence.

Microsoft’s aggressive AI-related capital expenditures, alongside the slowing Azure growth, invited new questions about when these investments will pay off more substantially.

“It’s really about what’s already priced into the stock, and I think what was starting to price in for [Microsoft] was a higher growth rate, which is always a little dangerous,” said Melissa Otto, head of technology, media and telecommunications research at Visible Alpha. “We haven’t really seen Amazon moving up in the same way.”

Read more here.
At the market open, US stocks plunged for a third day as a broad sell-off in tech names continued.

The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC) led the way lower, sinking 1.3%, while the S&P 500 (^GSPC) shed 0.9%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI), which includes fewer tech stocks, fell 0.5%.
US weekly applications for unemployment benefits increased by more than expected last week, as snowstorms across much of the country may have led more people to file for assistance.

Jobless claims for the week ending Jan. 31 increased by 22,000 to 231,000 claims, exceeding economists’ forecasts, the Labor Department reported Thursday.

Continuing claims, a proxy for the total number of people receiving state unemployment benefits, increased to 1.84 million.

Distortions from winter weather notwithstanding, the number of Americans filing for jobless benefits suggests the labor market remains broadly stable if not cooling gradually.

Though in a sign of cracks appearing in the “low hire, low fire” trend that has characterized the labor market for over a year, layoffs jumped in January to their highest level for that month in 17 years, according to Challenger data (scroll down for more on this).
Yahoo Finance’s Emma Ockerman reports:

Read more here.
Yahoo Finance’s Hamza Shaban reports:

Jeff Bezos came, he saw, he conquered.

Maybe not in the way you’d expect from a onetime financial savior of an iconic newspaper. There are now two Bezos eras at the Washington Post: The first started when he rescued it in 2013. The second began when he saw it gutted, blessing mass layoffs the company executed on Wednesday.

… On social media and in news coverage in the aftermath, Post employees, the labor union, and alumni (myself included) strongly criticized the decision.

Others have pointed to more recent moves by Bezos.

Leading up to the Post’s deep cuts, several media observers highlighted Amazon’s enormous budget to produce and market the new documentary “Melania,” about first lady Melania Trump.

Amazon’s extraordinary spending prompted questions about the movie working as a kind of bribe from Bezos to the White House. (Amazon says they licensed the movie because they think people will love it. The film’s Rotten Tomatoes scores and box office numbers have inspired a news cycle of their own.)

But the splashy Melania rollout provided an ugly contrast to the austerity Bezos was serving down to the Post’s newsroom. In the worst light, critics said Bezos was willing to burn money to please the president but was now unwilling to do so for journalism in the public interest.

Read more here in the takeaway from today’s Morning Brief.
Chinese EV maker Nio (NIO) sent its shareholders a profit alert on Thursday morning, letting them know that the company expects to post its first-ever profit in the fourth quarter.

Nio said it will see an adjusted profit from operations of 200 million Chinese yuan (approximately $29 million) to 700 million yuan (approximately $100 million).

The company attributed the profit to sustained sales growth, improved margins from its product mix, and ongoing cost-cutting measures.

Nio stock popped 6% in premarket trading.
Estee Lauder (EL) shares slumped 10% before the bell on Thursday, despite beating analysts’ estimates on earnings per share and revenue, as tariff woes sent the beauty group’s shares tumbling.

Investing.com reports:

Read more here.
Strategy (MSTR) stock fell over 5% during premarket hours on Thursday after bitcoin (BTC-USD) fell below 70,000. Strategy is one of the largest corporate holders of cryptocurrency.

Tapestry (TPR) stock rose 5% before the bell. Coach’s parent company beat analysts’ estimates on revenue and raised its full-year guidance.

Baidu (BIDU) US-listed shares rose 5% before the bell on Thursday after announcing plans to issue its first dividend to shareholders, along with a three-year stock buyback program worth $5 billion.
From Bloomberg:

Read more here.
Bitcoin (BTC-USD) tumbled, falling $71,000 per token on Thursday after Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent suggested the US government would not bail out the cryptocurrency.

But the leading cryptocurrency was paring deeper overnight losses in the wake of Bessent’s comments, after entering the key mid-$70,000 support region.

Yahoo Finance’s Ines Ferré and Grace O’Donnell report:

Read more here.
Snap (SNAP) stock galloped higher after a strong holiday quarter for advertising lifted earnings above Wall Street’s estimates.

Snap stock rose 6% before the bell on Thursday.

For the fourth quarter, the video messaging app reported revenue of $1.71 billion and earnings per share of $0.03. That beat Wall Street estimates of $1.7 billion in revenue and a $0.03 loss per share, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence.

Reuters reports:

Read more here.
E.l.f. Beauty (ELF) demonstrated resilience in the fourth quarter following a difficult 2025, with a strong earnings beat and guidance raise.

The affordable cosmetics manufacturer lifted its full-year 2026 sales outlook to a range of $1.6 billion to $1.61 billion from its previous range of $1.55 billion to $1.57 billion. The company also sees greater earnings per share of $3.05-$3.10, an increase from the previous range of $2.80-$2.85.

The stock soared by as much as 8% in premarket trading on Thursdayas the company looks to regain its footing after higher tariffs and other challenges led the stock to lose 40% in 2025. However, the stock pared some of those gains, perhaps due to lower gross margins amid ongoing tariff costs.

Last year, the company also acquired Hailey Bieber’s Rhode brand.

In the fourth quarter, e.l.f. reported better-than-expected earnings per share of $0.65 versus $0.55 expected by Wall Street analysts. Net sales jumped 38% to $489.5 million, topping estimates of $461 million, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence.

“Our value proposition, powerhouse innovation and disruptive marketing engine continue to fuel our brands,” CEO Tarang Amin said in a statement. “We remain confident in our ability to grow market share and deliver best-in-class growth in beauty, as reflected by our raised fiscal 2026 outlook.”

Read more about e.l.f.’s quarter from Reuters.
Arm Holdings shares fall as licensing sales miss estimates.

From Reuters:

Read more here.
Broadcom (AVGO) stock rose 5% before the bell on Thursday following Alphabet’s (GOOG) capital expenditure plans, which surpassed analysts’ expectations.

Google’s parent company forecast 2026 capital expenditures of $180 billion, news that is a potential boon to Broadcom, which partners with Alphabet on custom chips.

“That is an incredible number. We are laughing because that number is so good for the Google cohort,” Ben Reitzes, Melius Research head of technology research, told CNBC.

Google is not the only company increasing its capex spend to build AI data centers: Oracle (ORCL) is doing the same and raised its forecast to around $50 billion.

Google’s AI software doesn’t just use Nvidia (NVDA) chips, but it also uses its own tensor processing units (TPUs). For Gemini 3, Google used TPUs, which Broadcom helped to make.
Bloomberg reports:

Silver (SI=F) fell sharply, wiping out a two-day recovery, as the white metal struggled to find a floor following a historic market rout. Gold (GC=F) also declined.

Spot silver plunged as much as 17% on Thursday, having flickered briefly above $90 an ounce in early Asian trading. After a record-breaking rally that appeared to run too far, too fast, the metal has retreated by more than a third from an all-time high hit on Jan. 29.

“Sentiment seems to have turned soggy across most asset classes, including regional equities and metals,” said Christopher Wong, a strategist at Oversea-Chinese Banking Corp. This has created “a feedback loop amid thin market liquidity,” he said.

The sudden and sharp decline in precious metals also weighed on sentiment in base metals markets, with copper falling more than 1% to slip below $13,000 a ton. Meanwhile, spot gold dropped as much as 3.5% in choppy trading.

Read more here.