What Happened?
A number of stocks fell in the morning session after investors grew increasingly skittish about the strength of the artificial intelligence boom and anxiously awaited key earnings reports.
Nvidia slid 3% ahead of its earnings report, dragging down fellow "Magnificent Seven" peers despite a major partnership announcement with Anthropic, as investors increasingly question the durability of the AI rally. Market sentiment was further dampened by Bitcoin dropping below $90,000, signaling reduced risk appetite, and growing anxiety that the Federal Reserve may pause rate cuts in December, with the implied probability of a cut falling to roughly 50%.
Adding to the weakness, Home Depot shares declined following an earnings miss and a cut to its full-year outlook. This combination of continued de-risking and valuation skepticism put the S&P 500 on pace for its fourth consecutive daily decline.
The stock market overreacts to news, and big price drops can present good opportunities to buy high-quality stocks.
Among others, the following stocks were impacted:
- Document Management company Dropbox (NASDAQ: DBX) fell 2.8%. Is now the time to buy Dropbox? Access our full analysis report here, it’s free for active Edge members.
- Data Storage company DigitalOcean (NYSE: DOCN) fell 4.9%. Is now the time to buy DigitalOcean? Access our full analysis report here, it’s free for active Edge members.
- Advertising Software company Zeta Global (NYSE: ZETA) fell 1.8%. Is now the time to buy Zeta Global? Access our full analysis report here, it’s free for active Edge members.
Zooming In On DigitalOcean (DOCN)
DigitalOcean’s shares are extremely volatile and have had 41 moves greater than 5% over the last year. In that context, today’s move indicates the market considers this news meaningful but not something that would fundamentally change its perception of the business.
The previous big move we wrote about was 5 days ago when the stock dropped 6.5% on the news that investors showed signs of fatigue with the AI-led rally, rotating out of high-valuation growth names.
After a fantastic run, many of the high-flying AI and technology stocks saw investors take profits: selling shares to lock in their gains. This is often called a "market rotation." Money is moving out of the red-hot tech sector (which some worry has become too expensive) and into other parts of the market that investors may currently deem more stable or reasonably-priced.
There's a secondary reason for the cautious mood: The long government shutdown came to an end. Though it's typically interpreted as good news, it also means a flood of delayed economic reports will be released. For weeks, investors were "flying blind" without key updates on the economy's health, like inflation data and the jobs report. In typical "sell the news" fashion, investors may also be taking profits and selling in anticipation that the new data would potentially give the Federal Reserve reasons to slow or even pause future rate cuts.
DigitalOcean is up 25.2% since the beginning of the year, but at $42.88 per share, it is still trading 17% below its 52-week high of $51.67 from November 2025. Investors who bought $1,000 worth of DigitalOcean’s shares at the IPO in March 2021 would now be looking at an investment worth $1,009.
While Wall Street chases Nvidia at all-time highs, an under-the-radar semiconductor supplier is dominating a critical AI component these giants can’t build without. Click here to access our full research report.
