Key Highlights

● Amazon closed at $243.79 on Thursday ahead of its third-quarter report.

● Alphabet lost roughly $500 billion of Market Value in a single day.

● AWS Revenue rose to about $46.0 billion, its fastest growth in roughly five years.

● Earnings per share of $1.89 missed the $1.97 consensus and the stock fell after hours.

Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) slid through Thursday's regular session as Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL)'s historic sell-off made investors nervous about what the E-commerce and cloud giant would report after the bell.

Nerves before the numbers

Amazon spent Thursday waiting, and investors did not wait calmly. Shares fell during the October 29 regular session to close at $243.79, according to market data, ahead of the company's third-quarter report after the bell.

The pressure came from a neighbour. Alphabet's results the evening before had triggered its worst day since its 2004 IPO, and one report said the plunge raised the stakes for Amazon Web Services, the cloud unit that drives much of Amazon's profit.

Why Alphabet mattered for Amazon

Alphabet's report hit a nerve that runs straight through Amazon. Google's parent showed negative free Cash Flow of $9.07 billion as quarterly Capital spending reached $51.36 billion, and it said 2027 capex will rise significantly. Another report said the results "reignited concerns over mounting AI costs."

Amazon faces the same questions. It has committed to $220 billion of capital spending in 2026, much of it on data centres and AI infrastructure. After Alphabet lost roughly $500 billion of market value in a day, some investors appeared to reduce their exposure before Amazon revealed its own cash-flow numbers.

Google Cloud's results added a twist. Its revenue more than doubled to $30.71 billion, a reminder that rivals are growing quickly in the cloud market AWS leads.

A drag on consumer stocks and the Dow

Amazon's decline weighed on the consumer discretionary sector, one of only three S&P 500 sectors to fall on Thursday. As a Dow component, it was also among the biggest decliners in the Blue-Chip average, which lost 132.54 points to 52,342.56.

The Nasdaq Composite fell 365.13 points to 26,184.72, and the S&P 500 slipped 23.59 points to 7,720.39. Yet more than 400 S&P 500 stocks rose, and the Russell 2000 gained 28.71 points to 2,859.22. One market strategist said, "Money is rotating within the market rather than leaving it."

Mixed signals from Big Tech

Not all megacaps sank. Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META) rose after a well-known investor called it "incredibly undervalued" in a television interview, according to market commentary, ending a five-session slide. Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT), which one report said delivered "a big cash-flow beat", finished roughly flat to lower.

The divide underlined what investors were rewarding. One market analyst said "markets are no longer rewarding companies simply for investing heavily in AI." In that light, Amazon's report would be judged on cash generation as much as on growth.

The report after the bell

When Amazon reported, the numbers were mixed. Net sales reached $201.9 billion and AWS revenue rose to about $46.0 billion, its fastest growth in roughly five years, according to one headline. But Earnings Per Share of $1.89 missed the $1.97 consensus, trailing-12-month free cash flow was negative $42.4 billion, and the midpoint of fourth-quarter sales guidance of $240 billion to $247 billion fell below the $244.5 billion consensus. The stock slid further in after-hours trading.

What to watch

Friday's regular session will show how deep the after-hours decline runs once full trading resumes. Investors will be parsing management's commentary on AWS demand, capacity and the path back to positive free cash flow.

The read-through to the rest of the AI trade is significant. Nasdaq-100 futures slid Thursday evening on Amazon and Intel (NASDAQ:INTC). Friday's Employment Cost index and the Federal Reserve's December 8–9 meeting, where futures lean toward a hike, add to the pressure on big-spending technology companies.