Market Indexes Scuba Dive on “Risk-Off” Fears
Thursday, February 5th, 2026
Market indexes scuba-dived today: went below the surface and stayed there, across the board. Bitcoin, metals and apparently equities are all being painted with the same quivering-hand brush. The Dow shed -592 points, -1.20%, the S&P 500 was -84, -1.23%, the Nasdaq -363, -1.59% and the small-cap Russell 2000 lost -46 points, -1.79%.
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Earnings Reports After Today’s Close
Amazon AMZN posted mixed Q4 results after today’s closing bell, with earnings of $1.95 per share coming in light of the Zacks consensus by 3 cents (though nicely above the $1.86 per share reported in the year-ago quarter). Revenues outperformed slightly for the quarter: $213.4 billion versus the $211.5 billion anticipated. Amazon Web Services (AWS) outpaced expectations, $35.6 billion versus $34.9 billion.
None of this explains why shares are trading down -8% in after hours, but this does: $200 billion in projected capex spending, presumably to keep up in the AI infrastructure race with companies like Alphabet GOOGL and Meta META. But we saw Microsoft MSFT fall off on their aggressive buy in this space, as well; as long as the AI trade remains suspect, massive expenditures into it aren’t going to be met with much but disdain.
This is before mentioning the 16K layoffs at the corporation this week, bringing Amazon’s grand total to 30K employees laid off since late last year. I guess $200 billion in spending doesn’t come cheaply, especially with lower-than-expected operating income in the current quarter. Amazon also saw its string on 12 straight quarterly earnings beats come to an end today.
Elsewhere, Roblox RBLX shares are up +20% on its Q4 earnings release this afternoon, with a better-than-expected loss per share of -$0.45, four cents better than the Zacks consensus. Daily Active Users (DAUs) grew +69% year over year to 144 million, with Hours Engages way up, +88%, to 35 billion.
Buy-now, pay-later platform Affirm AFRM stormed past estimates in its fiscal Q2 report after the close — earnings of 37 cents grew +61% year over year, and well ahead of the 28 cents per share expected. Revenues of $1.12 billion outpaced the $1.06 billion expected, with Gross Merchandise Volume (GMV) up +36%, but none of this was enough to send shares down another -4% in late trading. Worries over deterioration in consumer credit continue.
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This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com).
The views and opinions expressed herein are the views and opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Nasdaq, Inc.
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