CrowdStrike Stock Slides—Is Growth Momentum Tapping Out?

Key Points

• CrowdStrike stock is down 14% in 30 days despite strong long-term gains.
• The company’s earnings forecast is expected to meet, but not exceed, Wall Street's expectations.
• Long-term investors may want to wait for support before adding exposure.

It's been a bullish earnings season for technology stocks, but that hasn’t been the case for CrowdStrike Holdings Inc. NASDAQ: CRWD. The cybersecurity stock is down more than 14% in the last 30 days.

Some context is important. Even after the pullback, CRWD stock is still up 29.25% in 2025 and over 99% in the last 12 months. The stock is also up more than 285% in the last five years. A significant chunk of that growth occurred after the software update glitch that caused an outage last summer.

In fact, the overdone sell-off in CRWD stock last summer fueled the rally. The company used the crisis as an opportunity to let customers test drive modules in its Falcon platform.

That’s turned into revenue growth for the company as companies see CrowdStrike’s value across the entire cybersecurity stack and not just as a company that provides endpoint security.

The AI Catalyst Is Real, as Are Expectations

This is also an artificial intelligence (AI) story. CrowdStrike’s Falcon is a cloud-native, AI-first platform. The company launched its agentic AI solution, Charlotte AI, to automate detection, triage and response to protect customers from AI's emerging threats.

However, the company missed on revenue expectations in its last quarter. To be fair, the year-over-year (YOY) gains in revenue and earnings were still impressive and included a 100% YOY gain in annual recurring revenue (ARR). But the guidance indicated that a lot of growth has been factored into the CRWD stock price.

Earnings Could Provide a Catalyst, But Don’t Expect a Surprise

CrowdStrike may need a jolt from its earnings report on August 27 to reverse the negative momentum in CRWD stock. But it’s unclear if that will happen.

On its Q1 earnings call, CrowdStrike guided for revenue between $1.14 and $1.15 billion. That would be about a 3% sequential improvement and an approximate 18% year-over-year (YOY) increase on the top line.

Analysts have a $1.15 billion forecast, which means that even at the high end of its guidance range, CrowdStrike would only meet expectations.

The same is true of earnings. CrowdStrike guided earnings per share (EPS) between 82 and 84 cents. Analysts are forecasting right at the midpoint of that guidance, 83 cents.

It's possible that this is setting CrowdStrike up for blowout earnings, similar to the report delivered by Palantir. CrowdStrike’s revenue growth has been moderating in the last several quarters, not accelerating like Palantir's.

That suggests the company hitting its forecast is a more likely best-case scenario.

Institutions May Be Getting Ready to Buy Short-Term Weakness

Analysts remain bullish on CRWD stock, with over a dozen analysts raising their price targets since the company’s earnings report.

However, in the short term, the stock chart and the options chain dated August 29, just a couple of days after the company reports earnings, support a further decline in CRWD stock.

First, there’s the chart. CRWD stock has broken below its 100-day simple moving average (SMA).

This had previously been acting as a level of support, but may be setting up as the new area of resistance.

The MACD line crossed below the signal line in late July, and the gap is widening, suggesting that selling momentum is increasing.

However, volume is steady, which likely means that its institutions are pushing CRWD stock lower.

The August 29 options chain for CRWD stock also shows a bearish bias. For a $450 put option, the market is assigning a delta of -0.43.

That means traders believe there’s a 43% chance that the stock will close below $450 on August 29. The delta of 0.25 on a $500 call option means traders are assigning a 25% chance that CRWD stock will close above $500 on that date.

Think of the Pullback as a Reset, Not a Rejection

The main point is that a company and its stock are different. CrowdStrike is a strong company in a sector where multiple firms can grow. However, right now, the stock is expensive compared to its past and its peers.

That’s what institutions are signaling. They are also likely preparing to buy CRWD stock when it finds support, which could be in a zone between $420 and $425.