A tumble in tech leads the stock sell-off as rate cut pessimism rises

StubHub fell in after-hours trading after it reported earnings results that missed Wall Street estimates.

The company reported a loss per share of $4.27, compared to the $2.87 loss per share analysts polled by FactSet were expecting. The company said the steeper-than-expected losses were in part related to costs from its recent initial public offering. Still, the company reported $468 million in sales, more than the $452 million analysts were penciling in.

StubHub’s larger competitor, Live Nation, also reported earnings earlier this month that missed the Street’s estimates.

Solid Q4 results and a slightly better-than-anticipated outlook from Applied Materials aren’t inspiring any would-be buyers.

For the three months ended October 26, the firm reported:

• Revenue: $6.8 billion (compared to analyst estimates of $6.67 billion and guidance for $6.2 billion to $7.2 billion)

• Adjusted earnings per share: $2.17 (estimate: $2.11, guidance: $1.91 to $2.21)

Shares are down about 2% in after-hours trading.

Q1 guidance was also modestly ahead of estimates, as management pointed to sales of about $6.85 billion (plus or minus $500 million) with adjusted earnings per share of $2.18 (plus or minus $0.05). The consensus estimates for these figures were $6.81 billion and $2.15, respectively.

The company is preparing to meet a bigger pickup in demand by the middle of next year.

“Based on our conversations with our customers and partners, we are preparing Applied’s operations and service organizations to be ready to support higher demand beginning in the second half of calendar 2026,” Chief Financial Officer Brice Hill said.

Applied Materials was up more than 35% year to date heading into this report. That being said, it’s thoroughly lagged peers KLA Corp and Lam Research in the semi wafer fab equipment space, with the bulk of that underperformance coming after its Q3 earnings report in mid-August included underwhelming guidance for these Q4 results.

The entire space has come under scrutiny for its business with China, but Applied Materials has had the worst go of it: in early October, management flagged a $600 million hit to fiscal 2026 sales because of export restrictions.

French gaming company Ubisoft, the maker of franchises like “Assassin’s Creed” and “Tom Clancy’s The Division,” took the odd step on Thursday of announcing the delay of its latest earnings report at the 11th hour.

The company also requested that trading of its shares be halted. Ubisoft’s US-listed ADRs are down more than 8% following the news.

“Ubisoft has requested Euronext to halt trading of its shares and its bonds from the market opening on November 14, 2025, until the publication of its first-half 2025-26 results in the coming days,” read an emergency press release. As a few were quick to point out online, Ubisoft advertised Black Friday deals “up to 90% off” shortly after the delay was announced.

According to reporting by Kotaku, Ubisoft CFO Frederick Duguet sent an email to staff stating that they could not share any explanation for the move with employees “due to legal regulations.”

Earlier this year, Ubisoft said it would spin off a collection of its top titles into a new subsidiary, with Chinese gaming giant Tencent taking a 25% minority stake in the carve-out with a $1.25 billion investment.

In September, Ubisoft rival EA announced it would be taken private in a $55 billion deal by a group including Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund.

Goldman Sachs’ High Beta Momentum Long stock basket of “highly reactive & tradable past winners” is having its worst day — down about 8% — since April 3, the day after the president announced the much more severe tariff regime than Wall Street had expected in his famed Rose Garden presser.

This isn’t just an oddity for Goldman’s high-beta momo basket — whose heaviest weightings include highfliers like Palantir, Applied Digital, Bloom Energy, and Sandisk, among others.

By harkening back to the April tariff shock, today’s tumble also underscores the sense of investors suddenly waking up to a range of serious risks that just a few weeks ago were widely and easily shrugged off.

For instance, Fed rate cuts that the market had been expecting to continue after September is now a less sure thing. Pricing from the CME’s FedWatch tool pegs the odds of a cut at next month’s meeting at roughly a coin flip, after a series of hawkish comments from Fed heads. (A month ago, the odds of another cut were close to 100%.)

Likewise, the consensus view that the hundreds of billions of dollars corporations are dumping into data centers will be easy to finance and inevitably profitable bets seems to be coming in for more scrutiny, especially over in the bond market.

And don’t forget about the blanket of fog surrounding the US economy, where it could still be weeks before government number crunchers get back into gear after the shutdown and are able produce an accurate picture of where the US economy and labor market actually are, even as we continue to get hints of fairly chunky layoffs to come.