Oracle Surges 12% While Apple, Amazon Tumble in Choppy Tech Week

Tech stocks delivered a choppy week, with the sector’s biggest names diverging sharply as AI spending debates intensified and bear market territory claimed two Magnificent Seven members.

Incredibly, every single Magnificent 7 stock is now down year-to-date after NVIDIA (NASDAQ: NVDA) shares slipped 2.23% on Friday. Let’s dive into the biggest storylines in technology this week. While many stocks sold off, we also saw a rebound in Oracle’s shares that may mark a turning point in brutal sentiment around the stock.

Weekly Performance Snapshot

Bear Market Territory Claims Two Mag 7 Names

Microsoft and Amazon both entered bear markets this week, down 27% and 23% from their recent highs, respectively. Microsoft’s decline comes despite beating earnings expectations. While the company delivered solid earnings, Wall Street swiftly delivered the stock its worst one-day decline since Covid. Microsoft currently has two ‘anchors’ on its share price.

First, it’s lumped in with software stocks that are selling off on fears AI will reduce their pricing power in the years to come. To defend against those fears, it needs to devote considerable computing resources to Copilot and its cash cow products like Office.

Unfortunately, that need runs in stark contrast to Wall Street’s other fear around the stock: Azure sales growth is below expectations. Microsoft guided to 38% growth next quarter, which is great. Unfortunately, the Street was expecting growth rates to climb above 40%. The reason Azure can’t grow is because Microsoft is devoting resources to defending its products.

It’s a difficult situation to be in. However, Microsoft should be fine in the long-term once it can clear the current negative sentiment.

In Amazon’s case, once again we have cloud growth rates that were simply too low. The company guided to $200 billion in capex this year. That’s a massive number, and if it were accompanied by confidence that AWS growth rates would accelerate into the upper 20s in the back half of the year, Amazon is probably trading 10% higher today. Unfortunately, that confidence wasn’t provided on the conference call. Once again, Amazon will likely be fine in the long-run. This isn’t the first time the stock has crashed on a disastrous performance from CEO Andy Jassy on a conference call (and it likely won’t be the last).

For now, Amazon is a compelling value, if you can stomach some near-term pain.

While Amazon and Microsoft were selling off on worries about cloud growth, Apple is selling off on concerns cloud demand will lead to serious margin erosion this year as memory prices rise. Given all this worry Magnificent 7 companies are spending too much on cloud infrastructure, you’d figure NVIDIA would at least be up.

(Spoiler: It was down this week too! More on that in a moment.) 

Oracle Bucks the Trend

Oracle bucked the trend with a 12% weekly gain after announcing plans to raise tens of billions for AI cloud infrastructure, though it still sits 18% below its 2025 high. Neocloud stocks had a great week. CoreWeave jumped 7% while Nebius rose even more. All the infrastructure spend from hyperscalers very likely should benefit neoclouds.

Still, Oracle is an example on how rapid shifts in sentiment can change. The company has been virtually ‘untouchable’ since OpenAI went on its media tour, announcing deal after deal and spooked the markets. We’ll see if the sentiment shift continues in the weeks ahead, but many companies in the broader ‘OpenAI’ complex look cheap to me right now relative to AI’s potential in the years ahead.

Nvidia Holds Steady Amid Chip Volatility

Nvidia managed a relatively flat week, down just 1.4% despite broadly good news for AI infrastructure companies. The big picture is that NVIDIA shares have stayed largely flat as expectations keep rising. 90 days ago, Wall Street expected the company to earn $6.81 in its next fiscal year, today that number is $7.74. Yet, shares are down about 12% from where they traded in early November despite these rising expectations.

I believe Wall Street is still underestimating NVIDIA’s upcoming year and $9 per share in EPS isn’t out of the question. If NVIDIA soundly beats earnings on February 25th, there could be a large reversal in its pricing.