Finance Evening: Nasdaq Falls 1.38% as Alphabet Sinks 12%; September PCE Hits 3.6%, Q3 GDP Grows 3.4%

📊 Today's North American Markets (Close, October 29, 2026)

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1. Earnings Drag All Three Indexes Lower; Alphabet Plunges 12%

Source: CNBC

U.S. stocks closed lower Thursday, weighed down by the latest batch of corporate earnings. The Nasdaq Composite fell 1.38% to 26,184.72, while the S&P 500 slipped 0.30% to 7,720.39, snapping a three-day advance. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 132.54 points, or 0.25%, to close at 52,342.56.

Alphabet dropped 12% after the Google parent missed expectations on adjusted earnings per share and revenue for the third quarter. It posted negative free cash flow of $9.07 billion and kept its full-year capital expenditure forecast at $195 billion to $205 billion. Dow component Caterpillar slid more than 9%, its worst day since March 2020; revenue and earnings beat estimates, but sales in its construction industries business came in slightly below expectations.

Microsoft gave back an early advance and ended marginally lower, even though Azure cloud growth helped its fiscal first-quarter earnings and revenue beat analyst estimates. Seven of the 11 S&P 500 sectors finished higher, led by real estate at 2.1% and healthcare at 1.9%; communication services fell more than 6% and information technology more than 1%. The Federal Reserve on Wednesday left its benchmark rate unchanged at 3.75%-4%.

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2. Amazon Misses on Revenue and Earnings; Stock Falls More Than 9%

Source: Yahoo Finance

Amazon reported third-quarter results Thursday that missed on both the top and bottom lines, sending the stock down more than 9%. Earnings per share came in at $1.89 versus an expected $1.97, and revenue was $201.9 billion versus expectations of $202.25 billion. A year earlier, the company reported EPS of $1.95 on revenue of $180.16 billion.

Amazon said fourth-quarter net sales will come in between $240 billion and $247 billion, against expectations of $244.5 billion. AWS revenue was $45.9 billion, above the $45.68 billion expected, while online store sales hit $68.47 billion, short of the $69.6 billion Wall Street anticipated. Advertising revenue was $19.6 billion.

CEO Andy Jassy said on the earnings call that Amazon has more than a million robots in its fulfillment network and that many more repetitive jobs will be done by robots. He said AWS exited the quarter at a $184 billion annualized revenue run rate and projected AWS growth above 40% in both 2027 and 2028, adding that about 85% of global IT spend is still on-premises. Amazon also noted that growth would have been about 400 basis points higher excluding the shift of Prime Day into the second quarter this year.

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3. ServiceNow Plunges 27% for Its Worst Day on Record

Source: CNBC

ServiceNow shares sank 27% on Thursday, their worst day on record, after the enterprise software company's third-quarter results underwhelmed and reignited concerns that artificial intelligence will upend traditional software business models.

Revenue grew more than 20% to $4.11 billion, roughly in line with the $4.10 billion analysts polled by LSEG expected. Adjusted earnings came up short at $1.00 per share versus a forecast of $1.02. The company slightly lifted its full-year 2026 subscription revenue outlook to between $15.78 billion and $15.79 billion, and net new AI average contract value jumped 65%.

Citi analyst Tyler Radke told CNBC the quarter was "a little bit uncharacteristic for ServiceNow standards, just in terms of the lack of upside." He said the market wanted to see a payoff sooner from the company's newly formed forward-deployed engineering team, and that investors may have to wait until next year for that inflection.

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4. DoorDash to Buy Instacart for $17 Billion

Source: Sina Finance

DoorDash has agreed to acquire grocery delivery platform Instacart for $17 billion, the latest round of consolidation in the fiercely competitive delivery industry. The San Francisco-based company announced Thursday that it is offering $65 per share, a premium of about 26% over Instacart's closing price before deal speculation emerged in mid-October.

About 75% of the consideration will be paid in cash, funded partly by a bridge loan from JPMorgan, with the remainder in DoorDash stock. Instacart's listed entity Maplebear fell more than 2.5% in premarket trading after the announcement, while DoorDash rose as much as 10%.

DoorDash co-founder and CEO Tony Xu said online grocery is one of the hardest businesses to run well, requiring someone to pick a ripe avocado, choose a substitute you would accept yourself and make sure the ice cream arrives unmelted. Instacart founder Apoorva Mehta said the two companies had discussed a combination before and that "the industrial logic of this deal has always been clear." Citi analysts had valued Instacart at about $13.3 billion, and the transaction could face regulatory scrutiny.

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5. Reddit to Require Accounts for All Users; Shares Drop More Than 15%

Source: CNBC

Reddit plans to require all users to create official accounts to access the platform, a major departure for the site known as "the front page of the internet." The company revealed the change with third-quarter results that beat on the top and bottom lines but came with weak fourth-quarter sales guidance; the stock fell more than 15%.

Daily active uniques rose 12% year over year to 130.3 million, trailing Wall Street estimates of 133.7 million. U.S. DAUq dropped 2% to 50.7 million, below projections of 53.5 million. Revenue grew 53%, but fourth-quarter sales are guided to $1 billion to $1.03 billion, below the $1.05 billion expected. Average revenue per user was $6.87, above the $6.50 analysts expected.

CEO Steve Huffman told CNBC that declining search referral traffic from Google played a major role in the plan to require logged-in users. He said Google's product is shifting from a traffic driver to something else, which means Reddit will focus on core users who come directly to the site. He gave no specific timing for the registration change, saying testing will begin in the fourth quarter outside the U.S., and called it the end of a line he had personally held.

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6. September PCE Rises to 3.6%; Third-Quarter GDP Grows 3.4%

Source: Fox Business

The Federal Reserve's preferred inflation gauge moved further away from the central bank's 2% target in September, the Commerce Department reported Thursday. The personal consumption expenditures price index rose 0.5% on a monthly basis and 3.6% from a year earlier, both in line with economists' expectations; the annual rate was 3.4% in August.

Core PCE, which excludes food and energy, rose 0.3% month over month and 3.1% year over year, up from 3.0% in August. Goods prices were up 3.9% from a year earlier, services prices rose 3.5%, and the personal savings rate slipped to 3.8% of disposable income from 4% in August.

In the same report, the advance estimate for third-quarter gross domestic product showed annualized growth of 3.4%, above the 3.2% economists expected. Bret Kenwell, U.S. investment analyst at eToro, said GDP was the bright spot, led by personal consumption, with federal government consumption at its highest level in at least five years — a sign demand remains resilient but one that does little to ease the inflation pressure tied to that demand.

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7. The AI-Driven Copper Rally Meets a Reality Check

Source: Sina Finance

Last week, thousands of metals investors and executives gathered in London for the London Metal Exchange's annual industry gathering, and the focus was copper — along with a consensus that the AI revolution will keep pushing the metal to record highs. But in the bars of Mayfair, traders and mining executives were haunted by another question: if the AI boom shows signs of fading, will the expected surge in demand over the next decade fail to materialize?

Graeme Train, head of metals and minerals analysis at Trafigura, said data centers have been the hot topic of the past year: they contributed almost no incremental copper demand in 2023, and he estimates about 350,000 tonnes of new demand this year, against total global demand of roughly 28 million tonnes. Expectations of shortages pushed copper toward record highs this year, though he acknowledged that high prices have "crowded out" demand outside AI and total consumption growth is weak.

Macquarie analyst Alice Fox said at an LME Week briefing that copper prices have run ahead of supply fundamentals: the global market was in a large surplus last year and is expected to stay in surplus for several years. The threat of U.S. copper tariffs has also created artificial tightness elsewhere — in the final week of October, 90% of copper inventories in the LME and COMEX delivery systems sat in the United States, versus about 20% two years ago.

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8. Peltz Offers $1.4 Billion to Take Wendy's Private

Source: NBC News

Wendy's shares jumped more than 14% on Wednesday after prominent investor Nelson Peltz made an offer to buy the burger chain. Peltz's Trian Fund Management and several partners are offering $7.35 per share in cash, a premium of nearly 19% over the stock's closing price on Tuesday, in a deal that values Wendy's at $1.4 billion.

Wendy's confirmed receipt of the unsolicited proposal on Wednesday and said its board has formed an independent committee to evaluate it. At the end of last year, Wendy's had 5,969 restaurants in the U.S. and 1,428 outlets in 38 countries.

As the fast-food market grew more competitive, Wendy's share of U.S. burger chain sales fell from 11.5% in 2019 to 10.4% last year, according to Technomic. The company closed 240 restaurants in 2024 and said earlier this year it planned to shutter up to 358 locations in 2026; last month one of its largest franchisees, Meritage Hospitality Group, filed for bankruptcy protection. In his letter, Peltz said Wendy's "sits at a critical juncture," citing pressure on the U.S. consumer, economic uncertainty, persistent commodity inflation and intensifying competition.

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9. Applebee's Suggested Tip Calculated After Tax Draws Questions

Source: New York Post

A customer is raising questions about tipping practices at Applebee's after noticing that the suggested gratuity on his bill was higher than expected. In a TikTok video, he questioned why the restaurant's payment kiosk suggested an $11.30 tip on a $49.49 bill. A 20% tip on $49.49 would be $9.90 — about $1.40 less than the suggested amount.

The apparent explanation was that the kiosk calculated the suggested gratuity on the after-tax total of $56.50 rather than the $49.49 subtotal, and the payment screen indicated that tips were calculated after tax and before discounts. Fox News Digital reached out to Applebee's and the customer for comment.

Robert Mahon, managing partner of New York City-based Mahon Hospitality Group, said restaurants generally have some control over how their payment systems calculate suggested gratuities, and that his group's Toast system defaults to calculating tips before tax. "You're tipping for the food, drinks, and service — adding tax into that calculation doesn't really make sense to me," he said, stressing that transparency matters most when customers are shown suggested percentages.

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10. "New Bond King" Gundlach Asks Why the Fed Won't Hike

Source: Sina Finance

Jeffrey Gundlach, founder of DoubleLine Capital and known as the "new bond king," on Wednesday publicly questioned the Fed's decision to stand pat, saying he does not understand why the central bank is not raising rates further. "What are you waiting for? You just upgraded your assessment of the economy," he said, referring to Fed Chair Kevin Warsh's description of a strong macroeconomic backdrop at his post-meeting press conference.

Gundlach said headline CPI inflation is heading toward 4% and the commodities index is rising in what is a bull market, adding: "I don't understand why the Fed is so reluctant to act." The Fed announced in the early hours of Thursday Beijing time that it would keep the federal funds target range at 3.75% to 4%.

He noted that the 3.75%-4% overnight rate is well below the roughly 4.7% yield on two-year Treasuries, a spread that signals the Fed needs to tighten further. "Unless oil prices fall notably, I think they have to hike in December," he said, adding that his portfolio remains 30% stocks — with a preference for the equal-weight S&P 500 — 30% bonds, 20% commodities and 20% in reserve cash. CME's FedWatch tool shows an 85% probability of a 25-basis-point hike in December.

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