Stocks Slide Into the Close as Tech Leads Losses, China Truce Fails to Spark Rally

At the closing bell Thursday, the Dow fell about 110 points (−0.23%) to 47,522, the S&P 500 dropped 68 points (−0.99%) to 6,822, and the Nasdaq Composite tumbled 377 points (−1.57%) to 23,581, while the Russell 2000 slipped 0.8% to 245. Commodities were mixed, with crude oil near $60.4 (−0.15%) and gold around $4,037 (+0.9%). Investors greeted the one-year U.S.–China truce with caution and looked ahead to results from Amazon and Apple after the close.

At the APEC summit in South Korea, Washington and Beijing agreed to a 12-month-moratorium on new escalations, a halving of tariffs on fentanyl-related chemical imports to 10%, a pause on certain U.S. port fees and 301 shipbuilding measures, and a one-year suspension of China’s rare-earth export restrictions. Beijing also pledged to resume agricultural purchases. The move offers stability but lacks enforcement detail, leaving core tensions intact, the document notes.

Technology shares illustrated the market’s push-and-pull. Meta dropped more than 11% as investors weighed the cost and payoff timing of its AI build-out, while Microsoft slipped more than 3% and Alphabet rose more than 3%. The trio’s AI capital spending is projected to exceed $200 billion in 2025 as they scale data centers and infrastructure. “We keep on seeing this pattern where we build some amount of infrastructure … and then we keep on having more demand to be able to use more compute,” Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said, adding that outside parties are already asking the company to “stand up an API service” to access compute. On the household side, borrowing costs continued to ease. The average 30-year mortgage rate fell to 6.17%, the lowest in more than a year, according to Freddie Mac. The Associated Press reported the 15-year averaged 5.41%. the Mortgage Bankers Association reported applications rose 7.1% in the week ended Oct. 24, with refinancing up 9% and the refi share at 57.1%, while ARMs declined to 8.9% of activity. “The ARM share … dipped below 10 percent last week,” said Joel Kan, MBA’s deputy chief economist, citing lower rates and elevated average refi loan sizes.