Company Performance - Home Depot shares fell 4% after the company reported disappointing third-quarter earnings and cut its full-year profit outlook [1] - Cloudflare shares declined 3% due to an outage affecting several prominent customers, including social media site X and ChatGPT [2] - Medtronic shares rose 4% after reporting better-than-expected fiscal 2026 second-quarter results and lifting its full-year outlook [4] - Merck stock advanced 4% following positive results from a Phase 2 trial of a heart drug [4] Market Trends - Major U.S. equities indexes, including the Dow Jones Industrial Average and Nasdaq, were down about 1%, with the S&P 500 falling 0.6% amid concerns about an AI bubble [1] - Oil and gold futures slipped, while the yield on the 10-year Treasury note edged lower [5] - Prices for most major cryptocurrencies were higher, with Strategy (MSTR) rebounding roughly 6% along with the price of Bitcoin [4]

Core Insights - Cloudflare is experiencing a significant outage affecting various crypto platforms, including BitMEX and DeFiLlama, with the company working to restore services [1][2] - The outage has led to a 4% decline in Cloudflare's stock price, closing at $202.25, with a further drop to $195.35 in pre-market trading [2] - The total cryptocurrency market capitalization has decreased by 3% to $3.12 trillion due to the outage [4] Company Impact - Cloudflare's internal service degradation has disrupted services for multiple platforms, indicating a reliance on its infrastructure within the crypto ecosystem [1][2] - The stock performance of Cloudflare reflects investor concerns, with a notable drop in share price following the outage announcement [2] Industry Reaction - The crypto community has expressed frustration and humor regarding the outage, highlighting the irony of a decentralized ecosystem being dependent on a single DNS provider [4] - Major cryptocurrencies have seen price declines, with Bitcoin dropping to $89,300.46 and Ethereum falling below $3,000 [5]

Core Insights - Cloudflare experienced a widespread networking outage affecting multiple customers, including major platforms like ChatGPT and social media platform X [1][2] - The company reported ongoing remediation efforts and warned of higher-than-normal error rates during the recovery process [3] Company Operations - Cloudflare's software serves as a protective buffer for hundreds of thousands of companies globally, shielding their websites from traffic overloads and attacks [3] - The company had previously faced outages, including a significant incident in July 2019 that disrupted thousands of websites for up to 30 minutes [4] - Another notable outage occurred in June 2022, impacting traffic in 19 data centers and lasting approximately an hour and a half [5] Market Impact - Following the outage, Cloudflare's shares fell by 3.6% in premarket trading [5]