Wall Street rocked by Tesla and Alphabet results [Video]

The shudder that rippled through Wall Street overnight appears to reflect a dawning realisation that the returns from the massive investments in developing artificial intelligence offerings may not justify the costs.

While the share prices of the “magnificent seven” companies at the heart of the frenzy over AI have been slipping over the past fortnight – even as those of small capitalisation stocks were rising – on Wednesday the market had its worst performance since late 2022.

The magnificent seven mega tech stocks – Apple, Microsoft, Nvidia, Alphabet (Google’s parent), Meta Platforms (Facebook’s parent), Amazon and Tesla – bore the brunt of the sell-off, losing about $US691 billion ($1.05 trillion) of their value.

The New York FANG index, which contains those stocks and a handful of other big tech companies, was …