U.S. Technology Shares Fall as AI Spending Faces Scrutiny

U.S. technology shares fell on Thursday and were lower again in Friday trading as investors assessed heavy artificial-intelligence spending, corporate results and inflation. At 12:30 p.m. ET Friday, the Nasdaq was down 2.6%, the S&P 500 had fallen 1.6% and the Dow Jones Industrial Average was 359 points lower, or 0.7%. Those were intraday readings, not closing figures. Thursday’s decline was led by the Nasdaq Composite, which dropped 1.38% to 26,184.72. The S&P 500 fell 0.30% to 7,720.39, while the Dow lost 0.25% to 52,342.56. The losses ended a three-day winning streak for the S&P 500 and Nasdaq. The small-cap Russell 2000 advanced, showing that the weakness was not shared across the entire market. Alphabet shares fell more than 12% after the Google parent missed analysts’ third-quarter revenue and earnings expectations. The company reported negative free cash flow of $9.07 billion and kept its full-year capital-expenditure forecast at $195 billion to $205 billion. The results renewed investor scrutiny of the cost of building artificial-intelligence infrastructure and the potential returns from that investment. Technology and semiconductor shares also weakened on Thursday....