Big Tech tumbles as results set off alarm bells - Reuters

Oct 26 (Reuters) - Gloomy results from Alphabet and Microsoft stoked fears of a planetary economical downturn and derailed an earnings-led surge successful banal markets connected Wednesday, portion mounting the code for results from different megacap exertion giants.

The Nasdaq (.IXIC) tumbled astir 2% arsenic the results underscored the fallout of beardown dollar and anemic request connected the tech assemblage against the backdrop of precocious ostentation and rising borrowing costs.

Shares of the Google-parent (GOOGL.O) and Microsoft (MSFT.O) fell astir 8% successful aboriginal trading. Meta Platforms Inc (META.O), which volition study aft markets close, was down 4%, portion Amazon.com Inc (AMZN.O) mislaid 4% and Apple Inc (AAPL.O) 1% successful the run-up to their results connected Thursday.

Heavyweights Netflix (NFLX.O), Meta, Amazon, Microsoft, Alphabet and Apple person already mislaid a combined marketplace worth of much than $2.5 trillion truthful acold this twelvemonth and were acceptable to shed different $330 cardinal connected Wednesday.

"The results of the large exertion firms were seen arsenic a cardinal determining origin successful marketplace sentiment going into the U.S. 3rd 4th reporting play and some Microsoft and Alphabet person fixed investors crushed to worry," said Laith Khalaf, caput of concern investigation astatine AJ Bell.

Alphabet missed Wall Street's people for gross maturation successful the 3rd 4th arsenic advertisement income remained weak, portion ostentation and a beardown dollar led Microsoft to study its slowest topline maturation successful 5 years. work much

At slightest 21 analysts chopped their terms people connected Alphabet, lowering it by arsenic overmuch arsenic $36, portion 17 of them brought down their targets connected Microsoft.

With analysts predicting a pullback successful budgets for advertizing owed to rising prices, investors fearfulness that Meta's concern excessively could travel nether unit arsenic it gross relies heavy connected ads.

"Investors volition beryllium bracing for Meta's results with immoderate trepidation, with a communal thought being that if Google's struggling, the remainder of the tech battalion faces a marathon climb," said Sophie Lund-Yates, an expert astatine Hargreaves Lansdown.

For Meta, Google Search's brushed results are worrisome portion YouTube and Snap weakness suggest that macro and advertisement targeting challenges continued successful the 3rd quarter, JMP Securities expert Andrew Boone wrote.

Meanwhile, a slowdown successful maturation astatine Azure, Microsoft's unreality level and 1 of its astir palmy businesses, raised worries astir Amazon's unreality business.

While astir Big Tech stocks person edged higher successful the past fewer weeks, wide it has been a bleak twelvemonth for the assemblage that has mislaid astir 15% to 60% of their value.

Wednesday's selloff besides deed Europe's tech scale (.SX8P), falling 2.3% to pb sectoral losses successful the region. work much

Reporting by Yuvraj Malik, Akash Sriram and Nivedita Balu successful Bengaluru; Editing by Saumyadeb Chakrabarty and Arun Koyyur

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