Intel Falls Another 8.8% After Its Worst Day Since 1974 as the Chip Rout Hits $3.7 Trillion
Intel closed at $59.97 on November 2, down 8.8% for the day and less than half its end-of-September value. The slide follows October 30, when a weak fourth-quarter forecast knocked nearly 29% off the stock, erasing roughly $140 billion of market value in its worst session since July 5, 1974. Across chips and memory, Yahoo Finance’s tally puts losses at about $3.7 trillion since October 6.
Key Numbers
- Intel Q4 revenue guidance: $15 billion to $16 billion vs roughly $17 billion expected
- Intel Q4 EPS guidance: $0.25 vs $0.43 expected
- Intel data centre revenue: $7.3 billion in Q3, up nearly 80% year on year
- Intel PC shipment outlook: down about 12% in 2026, a further 10% in 2027
- Israel fab accident: about $300 million of Q4 revenue
- Monday chip-sector loss: more than $400 billion in a single session
- Memory and storage (Micron, Sandisk, Seagate, Western Digital): down roughly 6% to 8% Monday
- Nvidia: down about 16% since October 6, holding up better than most
- Intel stock path: nearly quadrupled from January to a June 22 record, then gave back about half
The mechanism
The quarter was fine: adjusted EPS of $0.52 beat estimates. The guidance broke the stock, and the cause sits outside Intel’s own roadmap. AI data centres are absorbing the world’s memory supply, which raises DRAM prices and pushes up the cost of laptops and desktops. Intel expects buyers to respond by purchasing fewer of them. Its server business is the strongest it has been, and its PC business is shrinking faster than the server side can offset.
Bank of America’s Vivek Arya downgraded Intel to Neutral, cutting his target to $100 from $145, and described Intel’s “agentic tide” in data centre CPUs as “more than offset by PC/supply headwinds”. Bernstein’s Stacy Rasgon called the outlook “terrible” and cut his target to $75 from $110. Arya also flagged a lack of disclosed traction with outside foundry customers.
Why it is spreading
Monday was a split tape: about seven in ten S&P 500 stocks rose, while almost every chip stock fell. Memory and storage names, which led this year’s chip boom, took the heaviest hits. Marvell fell harder after agreeing to buy Lumentum in a deal valued at $115 billion, a transaction reported to be paid in Marvell shares; Lumentum was valued at about $83 billion when talks leaked, against Marvell holding $3.93 billion in cash as of August.
Software was mixed. Cybersecurity names such as Fortinet and CrowdStrike fell with chips. SpaceX rose, though it remains below its early-October level.
What it signals for AI infrastructure
Three things stand out for anyone tracking compute supply:
- Memory is the binding constraint, and it is now visible in consumer demand. Intel’s PC forecast is the first large-cap guide to quantify the demand destruction from memory pricing.
- Agentic workloads are real CPU demand. A near-80% jump in Intel’s data centre revenue is a number the market acknowledged and then ignored.
- Financing is the next pressure point. Oracle’s $10 billion stock and $10 billion note sale landed the same day, and its shares fell 8.8%.
AMD reports Tuesday after the close, the same day as the US midterm vote. Nvidia has fallen less than the group, which leaves open whether this is a sector-wide repricing or one concentrated in memory, storage and Intel.