Stock Market Live November 18: S&P 500 (VOO) Opens Lower as Google CEO Warns of an AI Selloff
Quick Read
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Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai warns that valuations of AI stocks may have become irrational. Says no stock may be immune to the selloff.
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Home Depot missed on earnings today, but beat on sales, and warned on earnings.
Live Updates
Time to Start Worrying About Amazon?
Rothschild Redburn analyst Alex Haissl downgraded Amazon.com (Nasdaq: AMZN | AMZN Price Prediction) to neutral with a $250 price target.
“Taking a more cautious view on AWS is a difficult but necessary step,” says Haissl, who likes Amazon’s “vertical integration and its partnership with Anthropic” on AI. “However, the backdrop has shifted. AWS has reaccelerated broadly as we expected, leaving limited scope for meaningful upside relative to buy-side expectations.”
Long story short, Amazon seems to have succeeded so well with AI that there’s now nowhere to go but down — or at least flat — as the generally unprofitable general intelligence development dilutes returns at the e-commerce giant.
Investors don’t like the sound of that at all, and Amazon stock is down more than 4% today.
Honeywell Sinks on Reorg Fears
BofA Securities analyst Andrew Obin double-downgraded shares of S&P 500 component company Honeywell International (Nasdaq: HON) to underperform with a $205 price target this morning.
“Honeywell is … reorganizing its portfolio, most notably separating into Honeywell Aerospace and Honeywell Automation in 2H26,” reminds Obin. But while “history suggests simplification creates value … the Solstice spin and Aerospace CEO have not matched our/investor expectations.” Coupled with no EPS growth in 2026E, we think shares will continue to lag.”
The Voo’s loss has now doubled to 1%, and Honeywell stock isn’t helping the average — down more than 2%.
Energizer Bunny Runs Out of Juice
In non-S&P 500 news, battery company Energizer Holdings (NYSE: ENR) missed by 12 cents this morning, reporting a $1.05 per share profit for its fiscal Q4 2025. Revenue for the quarter topped estimates at $832.8 million, but that’s apparently not going to be enough to prevent a selloff. Energizer stock opened down more than 18% this morning.
Is this an overreaction to an earnings miss? Actually, no. The real problem at Energizer is guidance, because the company warned that Q1 earnings may be a mere fraction of the $0.69 per share Wall Street was projecting — as little as $0.20 to $0.30 per share. Full year profit will probably also miss, ranging from $3.30 to $3.60 per share, where Wall Street wants to see $3.72.
The Voo opened 0.5% lower today.
This article will be updated throughout the day, so check back often for more daily updates.
The Vanguard S&P 500 ETF (NYSEMKT: VOO) lost nearly 1% on Monday, and as Tuesday dawns is continuing to slide, down another 0.4% premarket. Media pundits continue to blame investor worries about an over-heated market, and overpriced AI stocks in particular, citing declines in still-pretty-red-hot names such as Palantir (Nasdaq: PLTR), which reported strong earnings earlier this month, and Nvidia (Nasdaq: NVDA), which reports tomorrow after the close.
And not only investors are worried.
This morning Alphabet (Nasdaq: GOOG) CEO Sundar Pichai told the BBC that momentum behind AI stocks this year has been “extraordinary,” but he also sees a certain amount of “irrationality” in AI stock valuations lately. Even more ominously, Pichai warned that if investors decide to rethink the multiples they’ve been paying for tech stocks, “no company is going to be immune, including us.”
And yet, perversely, this morning Alphabet stock is up more than 1% pre-market, while both Palantir and Nvidia are down! For the time being at least, Alphabet does look kind of immune!
Earnings
In earnings news, we have a couple of big S&P 500 component companies reporting this morning:
Home Depot (NYSE: HD) missed by a dime today, reporting Q3 profit of $3.74 per share on sales of $41.4 billion. Wall Street only expected $41.2 billion in sales, however, so the news is not all bad. However, for the full year, Home Depot projects sales growth of about 3% with “slightly positive” same-store sales growth, but net profit down 6% at approximately $14.01 per share.
Home Depot stock is down more than 4% premarket.
In contrast, Medtronic (NYSE: MDT) beat earnings by a nickel with fiscal Q2 2026 earnings of $1.36 per share and sales of $9 billion, again better than forecast. Medtronic guided higher than expected, with fiscal 2026 profit expected to range from $5.62 to $5.66, and Medtronic stock is up nearly 4%.
Joel South covers large-cap stocks, dividend investing, and major market trends, with a focus on earnings analysis, valuation, and turning complex data into actionable insights for investors.
He brings more than 15 years of experience as an investor and financial journalist, including 12 years at The Motley Fool, where he served as an investment analyst, Bureau Chief, and later led the Fool.com investing news desk. He has also co-hosted an investing podcast and appeared across TV and radio discussing market trends.
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