Tech stocks have had their worst two-week run since the pandemic began.

What started as a third-quarter rebound turned out to be a flop for tech investors.

The Nasdaq fell 5.1% this week after losing 5.5% last week. This marks the worst two-week period for the tech-heavy index since it fell more than 20% in March 2020, the start of the Covid-19 outbreak in the US.

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With the third quarter set to end next week, the Nasdaq is poised for a third straight quarter of losses unless it can erase a 1.5% drop over the last five trading days.

Investors have been dumping tech stocks since the end of 2021, betting that rising inflation and interest rates will have a big impact on the wealthiest companies. The Nasdaq is now sitting narrowly at a two-year low since June.

Markets have continued to be hammered this week by the Fed, which on Wednesday raised interest rates by another three-quarters of a percentage point and signaled it would continue hiking above levels as it tries to bring inflation down from record levels. Since the early 1980s. The central bank took the federal funds rate to 3%-3.25%, the highest since early 2008, following its third consecutive 0.75% move.

Meanwhile, the dollar strengthened as the rate hike pushed the 10-year Treasury yield to an 11-year high. That would make American products more expensive in other countries, hurting export-heavy technology companies.

“It’s a one-two punch on technology,” Jack Ablin, chief investment officer of Crescent Capital, told CNBC’s “TehcCheck” on Friday. “The strong dollar doesn’t help tech. 10-year high Treasury yields don’t help tech.”

Among the group of megacap companies, Amazon had the worst week, falling 8%. Google’s parent letter and Facebook’s parent meta each slipped about 4 percent. All three companies are in the midst of price cuts or freezes as weakening consumer demand, advertising costs and inflation put pressure on wages and products.

CNBC reported on Friday that Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai faced heated questions from employees at an all-hands meeting this week. The employees expressed concern about the need to improve productivity by 20% due to cost reductions and recent comments from Pichai.

Tech earnings season is about a month away, and growth prospects are muted. Alphabet is expected to report single-digit revenue expansion after growing more than 40% a year ago, while Meta is seeing a second straight quarter of declining sales. Apple’s growth is expected to exceed 6 percent. Amazon’s and Microsoft’s expectations are higher, at 10% and 16%, respectively.

The last week has been particularly difficult for some companies in the sharing economy. Airbnb, Uber, Lyft and DoorDash all experienced drops of between 12% and 14%. In the year In the cloud software market, which has grown exponentially in recent years before falling in 2022, some of the biggest decliners were shares of GitLab (-16%), Bill.com (-15%), Asana (-14%) and Confluent (). -13%)

Cloud giant Salesforce held its annual Dreamforce conference in San Francisco this week. In a segment of the conference focused on financial metrics, the company announced a new long-term profitability goal that demonstrates its commitment to efficiency.

Salesforce is looking for a 25% adjusted operating margin, including future acquisitions, CFO Amy Weaver said. This is up from the 20% target set for fiscal year 2023 a year ago. The company is trying to reduce sales and marketing as a percentage of revenue, in part through more self-service efforts and improved productivity for its salespeople.

Shares of Salesforce are down 3% for the week and down 42% for the year.

“There’s a lot going on in the market,” co-founder Marc Benioff told CNBC’s Jim Cramer in an interview at Dreamforce. “Between the funds and the recession or the pandemic. All of these things are tapping into a lot of forces.”

See: Jim Cramer’s interview with Marc Benioff at Dreamforce