The Nasdaq-100 posted its worst week since April 2025, with chip stocks, AI-related borrowing worries, inflation numbers and oil over $100 a barrel all adding pressure. Since 2010, the Invesco QQQ Trust has nearly always been higher a year after similar drops, but the record since 1999 looks weaker.
The Nasdaq-100 fell about 5.5% in the week ending Oct. 16, its worst week since the one ending April 4, 2025, when it lost almost 10%. The Invesco QQQ Trust, the exchange-traded fund that tracks the index, dropped around the same amount.
Chip stocks and AI borrowing drive the drop
Chip stocks did much of the damage. The VanEck Semiconductor ETF fell around 10% that week, its largest weekly drop since April 2025, while other AI-linked stocks slid too.
Investors also worried about how much tech firms are borrowing to cover AI-related capital spending. Hotter-than-expected inflation numbers added to the pressure, according to The Motley Fool. Oil over $100 a barrel did too.
QQQ climbed after nearly every similar drop since 2010
The Motley Fool's Daniel Sparks counted only the first week with a loss of 4% or more in any 30-day window. Since 2010, QQQ was higher a year later after 25 of the 26 such weeks that have had a full 12 months to play out, with a median gain of around 22% based on price alone.
The week that ended April 4, 2025 was followed by a gain of about 38% in the next year.
The 2022 exception and the dot-com years
The only miss since 2010 came in early 2022. QQQ dropped around 4.5% in the week ending Jan. 7, 2022, and a year later it was down around 29%. That week turned out to be early in a long slide. Separately, the Federal Reserve started lifting its benchmark interest rate in March 2022.
The record looks less reassuring when it stretches back to 1999. Of 71 qualifying weeks, 47 were followed by a gain, or about two-thirds. QQQ had 18 qualifying weeks from January 2000 through mid-2002, and none was followed by a gain over the next 12 months.
Sparks writes that it's too soon to tell if the week that ended Oct. 16 was a brief scare or the start of a longer slide, and that a bad week can end up being the beginning of a bear market.
Source: The Motley Fool
Trading involves risk.
Risk Disclaimer
