These 2 Tech Stocks Both Fell 29% on Friday. Are They Buying Opportunities Now?

Intel fell 28.6%—erasing roughly $140 billion in market value—and Reddit dropped 29.2% after their reports, while the Nasdaq fell nearly 3%. Intel’s Q3 revenue rose 21% to $16.5 billion and its data center and AI revenue increased 78% to $7.3 billion, but Q4 revenue guidance of $15 billion–$16 billion trailed analysts’ roughly $17 billion estimate; management cited PC weakness and an Israel factory accident costing about $300 million in revenue. Reddit revenue grew 53% to $895 million, but search referrals fell by more than 1 million per week on average in October, U.S. daily users declined 2% to 50.7 million, and the company warned total daily users could fall by a low-double-digit percentage this quarter. The article says Intel’s memory-driven PC pressure may persist through at least the first half of 2027, while the durability of Reddit’s AI-search traffic challenge is less certain.

Analysis

The key distinction is cyclical input scarcity at Intel versus possible structural disintermediation at Reddit. For Intel, memory tightness can squeeze PC demand and Intel’s near-term mix even while data-center demand is strong; that is not automatically a durable share gain for AMD, since a shrinking PC market can hurt both vendors. The upside case requires data-center growth to translate into consolidated earnings power, not merely headline segment growth. For Reddit, reduced search referrals threaten more than this quarter’s traffic: they can weaken new-user acquisition and eventually ad inventory. Logged-in engagement is the counterweight, while any benefit from AI companies licensing Reddit content should be treated as unproven until contracted economics are disclosed.

Over the next 1–3 months, the decisive signals are Intel’s PC demand, gross-margin trajectory and data-center growth, and Reddit’s daily-user trend split between logged-in and logged-out cohorts. Over 6–18 months, Intel’s risk is that the memory constraint resolves only after PC replacement demand has been impaired; Reddit’s is that AI search permanently captures discovery without returning equivalent referral traffic. The sharp repricing alone does not establish either stock as cheap. A reversal in memory availability or evidence Reddit is converting app users and monetizing them independently of search would challenge the bearish cases.

Key Decisions for Investors

• INTC: Do not buy the post-drop solely on the data-center growth narrative; stay underweight pending evidence that PC weakness and gross-margin pressure are stabilizing. Reassess if PC shipment expectations improve and data-center growth persists without further margin deterioration; further guidance cuts would falsify the recovery case.
• RDDT: Avoid initiating a fresh short immediately after the gap down, but defer dip-buying until the next user update. Track total daily users alongside logged-in user growth and ad monetization; sustained logged-in growth with stable revenue per user would weaken the structural-bear thesis, while continuing user declines would confirm it.
• Relative-value watch: A small long GOOG / short RDDT basket expresses the advantage of owning search distribution over depending on search referrals, but keep risk limited: AI answers may also cannibalize Google’s click-based economics. Revisit on evidence of search monetization and Reddit referral recovery, and exit the thesis if both companies’ engagement and monetization trends deteriorate together.